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Derangements of the Liver

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Derangements of the Liver

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare a small plate of well-boiled oatmeal or hominy porridge and serve with milk.

  2. Follow with a cup of weak tea and a slice of toast with a little butter.

  3. Optionally, add fresh white fish or a slice of bacon with the tea and toast.

  4. For lunch, serve vegetable soup with bread or fish with mashed potato and fresh green vegetables.

  5. Include a glass of claret mixed with water or a tablespoon of spirit in water.

  6. In the afternoon, enjoy a cup of tea with thin bread and butter, a rusk, or a plain biscuit.

  7. For dinner, serve plain vegetable soup or fish, followed by chicken, game, or tender mutton with mashed or grated potato and well-boiled green vegetables.

  8. Finish with a plain milk-pudding or stewed fruit.

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. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + watercresstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

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

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

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, tea, butter, fish, bread, potato, watercress):

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, tea, butter, fish, bread, potato, watercress. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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