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Common Diet

A weekly meal plan including tea or coffee, bread, butter, beef, potatoes, soup, roast meat, and potato hash.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Common Diet

Ingredients

Directions

Breakfast

  1. Serve 1 pint of tea or coffee with 5 oz. of bread and 1 oz. of butter for breakfast.

  2. Alternatively, have boiled bread and milk or porridge with milk.

Dinners

  1. Roast 6 oz. of beef and serve with 4 oz. of bread and 8 oz. of potatoes for dinner on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday.

  2. Serve 1 pint of good soup with 2 oz. of roast meat, 8 oz. of potatoes, and 4 oz. of bread on Monday.

  3. Prepare potato hash with 4 oz. of bread or serve cold meat with 8 oz. of potatoes and 4 oz. of bread on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Supper

  1. Repeat breakfast but omit coffee for supper.

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

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

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Tea + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

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

  4. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. 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

Potatoes
Provide bulk and starch, making the meal filling and giving the hash its soft, crisp texture.
Beef
Supplies the main protein of the roast, and its surface browns during roasting for flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the bread at breakfast.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, bread, butter, beef, meat. 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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