Name: Milk-diet
Ingredients: 12 oz. of bread; 1 pint of milk; ½ pint of rice pudding; ½ pint of batter pudding; 1 pint of gruel; 1 pint of tea; 6 oz. of butter; 12 oz. of farinaceous pudding (bread, sago, arrow-root, rice, tapioca)

Why it works: Rice and tea work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 197 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Milk-diet

Ingredients

Directions

Breakfast

For breakfast, serve 1 pint of milk with 12 oz. of bread.
For breakfast, serve 1 pint of tea with 6 oz. of bread and 6 oz. of butter.

Dinner

For dinner, serve ½ pint of milk with rice pudding for four days, and ½ pint of milk with batter pudding for three days.
For dinner, serve 1 pint of milk pottage with 6 oz. of bread.

Supper

For supper, serve either ½ pint of milk or 1 pint of gruel.
For supper, serve 1 pint of thickened milk.

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.

Rice + teatop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together197 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk: Provides the liquid base and most of the nourishment in every meal of this diet.
Bread: Supplies bulk and starch, giving the milk-based meals something solid to eat.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the bread served with tea.
Rice pudding: Thickens and sweetens the milk, giving it a soft, starchy texture.

“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.