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Common Diet

A daily meal plan including porridge, milk, tea, soup, meat, potatoes, rice, and bread with specified portions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Common Diet

Ingredients

Directions

Breakfast and luncheon

  1. Prepare 1 pint of porridge and serve with ½ cup of milk or 1 pint of tea for breakfast.

  2. For luncheon, serve 1 pint of soup.

Dinner and tea

  1. For dinner, roast or boil 6 oz. of beef or mutton and serve with potatoes.

  2. For tea, serve 1 pint of tea.

Supper and daily allowances

  1. For supper on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, serve ½ cup of milk.

  2. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, serve ½ cup of boiled rice and milk.

  3. Ensure every male has 14 oz. of bread and every female has 12 oz. of bread daily.

  4. Ensure every male has 6 oz. of meat and every female has 5 oz. of meat daily.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Tea + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, tea, beef, bread, meat):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, tea, beef, bread, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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