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Generous Diet

A simple meal of roasted beef, bread, and boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Generous Diet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roast 6 oz. of beef until cooked to your liking.

  2. Boil 8 oz. of potatoes until tender.

  3. Serve with 4 oz. of bread.

Serve

  1. Alternate between this meal and mutton, boiled or roasted, on different days.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 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

Beef
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the meal.
Bread
Adds starch and absorbs juices from the meat as a side.
Potatoes
Supply starch that becomes soft and filling when boiled until tender.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread. 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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