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Schmidt Test Diet

A daily diet plan of milk, cocoa, oatmeal, beef, and potato broth.

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. Drink 16 oz. of milk or cocoa prepared with cocoa powder, sugar, water, and milk in the morning.

  2. Prepare oatmeal gruel with oatmeal, butter, milk, and water, and add 1 strained egg for forenoon.

  3. Broil 4 oz. of chopped beef rare with 20 g of butter at noon.

  4. Add 8 oz. of potato broth made from 6 oz. of milk.

  5. Repeat the morning meal in the afternoon.

  6. Repeat the forenoon meal in the 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 + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Cocoa + potatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Supplies moisture, protein, and soft liquid body to the drink, gruel, and broth.
Oatmeal
Thickens the gruel and gives it a soft, starchy body.
Egg
Adds protein and richness, and helps bind the gruel as it sets.
Chopped beef
Provides protein and savory flavor as the main component of the noon meal.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and mouthfeel in the gruel and the beef.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, beef, potato. 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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