Skip to main content
Main

Cold Lunch for 30

A large cold lunch featuring salted beef, ham sandwiches, fowl salad, apple jam tarts, butter, cake, ice cream, fruit, coffee, mustard, sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,840 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Lunch for 30

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Boil the salted round of beef, then press it while cooling.

  2. Prepare 300 ham sandwiches using the cooked hams.

Make the salad and tarts

  1. Make a salad with the fowls, celery, and cabbage.

  2. Bake 300 puff paste tarts filled with apple jam.

Set out and serve

  1. Set out 10 pounds of butter and 20 pounds of cake on the table.

  2. Serve 6 gallons of ice cream.

  3. Provide apples and oranges as fruit options.

  4. Offer 15 gallons of coffee with milk, mustard, and sauces on the side.

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. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs (in the method)
Not listed in the record; omitted.
Salted round of beef
Main cooked meat, pressed while cooling so it holds a firm, sliceable shape.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, ham, celery, apple, butter, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, ham, celery, apple, butter, cream. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes