Name: Ordinary Diet
Ingredients: 1 lb bread; 1 lb meat (2 days roast mutton, 1 day boiled mutton, 4 days boiled beef); 1 lb potatoes; 1 pint soup (on boiled meat days)

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 ↓

Ordinary Diet

Ingredients

1 lb bread
1 lb meat (2 days roast mutton, 1 day boiled mutton, 4 days boiled beef)
1 lb potatoes
1 pint soup (on boiled meat days)

Directions

Serve 1 lb of bread with your choice of meat.
For meat, use 2 days of roast mutton, 1 day of boiled mutton, and 4 days of boiled beef.
Prepare 1 lb of potatoes as a side dish.
On days with boiled meat, serve 1 pint of soup.

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.

Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,533 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Bread + muttontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,488 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 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 starchy base of the meal, filling the plate alongside the meat.
Meat: Supplies protein and richness as the main component of each day's meal.
Potatoes: Adds starch and bulk as a side dish alongside the meat and bread.