Skip to main content
Main

Dinner

A simple dinner featuring fish, potato, celery, bread, rice pudding, toast, milk, and prunes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,047 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the fish and set aside.

  2. Boil the potato until tender, then mash.

  3. Cook celery in milk until soft.

  4. Toast the bread and spread with butter.

  5. Prepare rice pudding according to your favorite recipe.

  6. Cook prunes with sugar until soft.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish, potato, celery, bread, rice pudding, toast, milk, and prunes together.

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. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  2. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato
Mashed, it provides the bulk and soft texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the bread and potato.
Sugar
Sweetens the prunes and helps them soften as they cook.
Prunes
Provide a sweet, soft, fruity element to balance the savory fish.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, potato, milk, bread, butter, rice, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, potato, milk, bread, butter, rice, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes