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Middle or Ordinary Diet

A diet consisting of bread, porter, dressed meat, potatoes, rice pudding, mutton broth, vegetable soup, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Middle or Ordinary Diet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Serve 12 oz. of bread with ½ pint of porter.

  2. Alternate 4 oz. of dressed meat, roasted and boiled, with 9 oz. of potatoes.

  3. Prepare ½ lb. of rice pudding three times a week.

  4. On days with boiled meat, serve 1 pint of mutton broth.

  5. Occasionally, serve 1 pint of strong vegetable soup with meat and rice pudding twice a week, along with the full bread allowance.

  6. Use 1 oz. of butter each day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

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

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides starch and bulk as the core carbohydrate of the daily allowance.
Potatoes
Supply starch and bulk, filling the plate alongside the meat.
Rice pudding
Adds sweetness and soft moisture from milk and rice, giving a filling dessert.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and flavour to the daily diet.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, meat, rice, mutton, butter. 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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