Name: Full Diet
Ingredients: 1 pint cornmeal; ¾ pound meat; ½ pound potatoes; 1 pound bread

Why it works: Meat and potato work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 786 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Full Diet

Ingredients

1 pint cornmeal
¾ pound meat
½ pound potatoes
1 pound bread

Directions

Prepare 1 pint of cornmeal gruel by cooking cornmeal in water until thickened.
Cook ¾ pound of meat by your preferred method.
Boil or bake ½ pound of potatoes until tender.
Serve 1 pound of bread as a 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.

Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together434 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal: Thickens water into a gruel, providing the bulk of the starchy base.
Meat: Supplies protein and richness as the main component of the meal.
Potatoes: Adds starch and bulk, becoming soft and filling when boiled or baked.
Bread: Serves as a starchy side that adds texture and bulk to the meal.