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Dinner of Mutton or Pig's Cheek

A dinner featuring mutton or pig's cheek served with vegetables, milk-pudding, baked apple, custard, and a drink of old spirit and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Dinner of Mutton or Pig's Cheek

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Choose 4 ounces of roast or boiled mutton, a mutton chop, or a slice of pig's cheek or calf's head.

  2. Serve with a spoonful of well-cooked vegetable like mashed spinach or French beans.

  3. For dessert, have a few spoonfuls of plain milk-pudding seasoned with cloves or cinnamon, or a baked apple with custard.

  4. Drink a tablespoon of old spirit mixed with a claret glass of water towards the end of the meal.

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 + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Apple + spirittop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Spinach + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together814 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, milk, apple, spirit):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, milk, apple, spirit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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