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Schmidt Test Diet

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Schmidt Test Diet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In the morning, drink 1½ liters of milk or 1½ liters of cocoa made with cocoa powder, sugar, and water.

  2. For the forenoon, prepare oatmeal gruel with oatmeal, butter, milk, and water, adding a strained egg.

  3. At noon, broil 8 oz. of chopped beef rare with ⅓ cup of butter.

  4. Add 8 oz. of potato broth made from mashed potatoes, milk, and butter.

  5. Repeat the morning and forenoon meals in the afternoon and evening.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cocoa powder, sugar, butter, egg, beef):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cocoa powder, sugar, butter, egg, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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