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Lunch, No. 2

A lunch of cold sandwiches, coffee with cream, and assorted snacks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lunch, No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare sandwiches using cold corned beef, ham, or chopped tongue.

  2. Brew strong coffee and mix with thick cream.

  3. Cool the coffee in goblets filled with pounded ice.

  4. Arrange pickles, crackers, and cookies on a small table.

  5. Add sugar, spoons, nuts, and fruit, and set plates for each person.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Coffee + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Beef + coffeetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

  4. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the strong coffee.
Strong coffee
Provides the bold flavor base for the chilled coffee drink.
Cold corned beef
Serves as the savory, protein-rich filling for the sandwiches.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, coffee, cream, sugar):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, coffee, cream, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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