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Dessert

Common Diet

A weekly diet plan including bread, porter, beef, mutton, potatoes, vegetables, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

  1. Serve 12 oz of bread with 1 pint of porter for men and 1 pint for women.

  2. Include 8 oz of beef with potatoes three times a week.

  3. Include 8 oz of mutton with potatoes twice a week.

  4. Serve 8 oz of potatoes and soup with vegetables twice a week.

  5. Provide 1 pint of broth.

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. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Bread + muttontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

  5. Bread + potatotop 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

Bread
Provides the bulk of the carbohydrate in the meal.
Porter
Served as the drink alongside the bread, with a measure set for each sex.
Beef
Provides the meat portion served with potatoes on three days a week.
Mutton
Provides the meat portion served with potatoes on two days a week.
Potatoes
Serve as the starchy side dish with the meat and as part of the soup course.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, mutton. 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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