Name: Ordinary Diet
Ingredients: 2 pints of tea; ½ cup of sugar; 1 pint of milk; 4 oz. of cooked meat; 1 lb. of potatoes; 12 oz. of bread; 3 oz. of butter

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ordinary Diet

Ingredients

Directions

Brew 2 pints of tea and sweeten with ½ cup of sugar.
Serve with 12 oz. of bread and 3 oz. of butter.
Prepare 4 oz. of cooked meat and serve with 1 lb. of boiled potatoes.
For supper, serve gruel.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Tea + potatotop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together136 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness of strong tea.
Butter: Adds fat, richness and flavour to the bread.
Potatoes: Boiling gives them a soft, starchy texture that makes the dish filling.
Milk: Adds creaminess and softens the astringent bite of the tea.

“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.