Name: Simple Diet
Ingredients: 10 oz. bread; 1 pint milk; 1 pint gruel; 3 oz. cooked meat (chops); ½ lb. clod and sticking beef (without bone); 1 lb. neck of mutton (with bone)

Why it works: Beef and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Simple Diet

Ingredients

Directions

Consume 1 pint of milk for breakfast.
Prepare and eat 1 pint of gruel for dinner.
Have 1 pint of milk and 3 oz. of cooked meat for supper.
Simmer ½ lb. of clod and sticking beef in water to make 1 pint of ordinary beef tea.
Use 1 lb. of the same beef to make strong beef tea.
Simmer ½ lb. of neck of mutton with bone in water to make 1 pint of broth without meat.

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 + muttontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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).
Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk: Provides liquid nourishment and a mild, soft base for the day's meals.
Beef: Simmered in water to extract flavour and dissolved meat essence into the tea.
Neck of mutton: Simmered in water to extract flavour and dissolved meat essence into the broth.

“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.