Skip to main content
Breakfast

Full Diet

A complete meal of oatmeal, buttermilk, boiled meat, potatoes, bread, barley broth, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Full Diet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook 2 cups of oatmeal in water until thickened.

  2. Stir in ½ cup buttermilk before serving.

  3. Boil 6 oz of meat until tender.

  4. Peel and boil 1 lb of potatoes until soft.

  5. Serve with 8 oz of bread.

  6. Prepare broth with 1 oz barley, ½ cup vegetables, and 2 oz meat.

  7. Serve 10 oz of new milk as a drink.

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 + barleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + barleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together201 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 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

Oatmeal
Its starch swells in water and thickens the dish into a porridge.
Buttermilk
Adds mild acidity and a creamy, tangy flavour to the oatmeal.
Meat
Boiling firms its proteins, becoming tender and savoury.
Potatoes
Boiling softens their starch, giving a soft, mashable texture.
Barley
Its starch releases into the broth, adding body and thickness.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, meat, bread, barley, milk. 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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes