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Ordinary Diet

A simple diet plan with bread, butter, salt, tea, broth, various proteins, potatoes, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Ordinary Diet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Serve 4 oz. of bread with 2 tablespoons of butter and coarse sea salt to taste.

  2. Brew 4 cups of tea.

  3. Serve 6 oz. of bread with 2 pints of broth or soup.

  4. Choose one protein: 4 oz. of boiled beef or mutton, 4 oz. of trimmed beef steak, 6 oz. of mutton chop, 1/5 of a chicken, or 8 oz. of cleaned fresh fish.

  5. If in season, substitute 1 lb. of potatoes for bread.

  6. Serve 4 oz. of bread with 2 tablespoons of butter and 4 cups of coffee.

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 + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  3. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides starch and bulk, making the meal filling as a base for the other dishes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and softening the bread.
Potatoes
Replace bread when in season, supplying starch and bulk.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, tea, beef, mutton, chicken, fish. 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.

More ordinary diet recipes

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