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Simple Diet

A simple diet consisting of milk, sugar, meat, potatoes, and tea.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Simple Diet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat 1 pint of milk in a pot and stir in ½ cup of sugar until dissolved.

  2. Prepare 1 lb of meat by roasting, boiling, or chopping.

  3. Cook ½ lb of potatoes until tender.

Serve

  1. Brew ½ oz of tea with hot water and serve with milk and sugar.

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

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

  2. Potato + teatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + teatop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Adds richness and softness to the tea, mellowing its bitterness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tea's bitterness.
Potatoes
Provide starchy bulk that softens as they cook until tender.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, meat, tea. 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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