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Dessert

Mr. Walker’s Plain Choice Dinner

A multi-course dinner featuring spring soup, turbot, beef ribs, crab, jelly, oranges, biscuits, anchovy toast, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mr. Walker’s Plain Choice Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Serve spring soup as the first course.

  2. Boil the turbot and serve with lobster sauce, cucumber, and new potatoes.

  3. Roast the ribs of beef until perfectly cooked and serve with French beans and salad.

  4. Present a dressed crab as the next dish.

  5. Finish with jelly for dessert.

  6. Offer oranges and biscuits, along with anchovy toast intermittently.

  7. Pair the meal with champagne, port, and claret.

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. Turbot + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Turbot + lobstertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Cucumber + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Lobster + crabtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together196 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Firm white fish that holds its shape when boiled, giving the main fish course its body.
Ribs of beef
Fatty meat whose fat renders during roasting, adding richness and savoury browning to the joint.
New potatoes
Waxy potatoes hold their shape when boiled, giving a firm, tender side to the fish.
Jelly
Gelatine or similar setting agent that gives the dessert its wobbly, sliceable structure.

The step that matters

Roast the ribs of beef until perfectly cooked. Beef is best judged by internal temperature rather than time, because the interior moves from rare to overcooked quickly. Resting the joint after roasting lets juices settle so slices stay moist.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, lobster, sauce, potato, beef, beans, crab):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, lobster, sauce, potato, beef, beans, crab. 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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