Name: Broth Diet
Ingredients: 1½ pints broth; 6 ounces potatoes (mashed); 2 tablespoons butter; gruel

Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Broth Diet

Ingredients

1½ pints broth
6 ounces potatoes (mashed)
2 tablespoons butter
gruel

Directions

Heat the broth in a pot until warm.
Mash the potatoes and mix with the butter until smooth.
Serve the mashed potatoes alongside the warm broth.
Prepare gruel according to package instructions.

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.

Potato + buttertop 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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Provide the bulk of the dish, with starch that thickens and gives the mash its body.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier texture in the mashed potatoes.
Broth: Supplies the main liquid and savory flavor for the warm serving.

“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.