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Mutton Diet

A diet consisting of bread, roast mutton, potatoes, and soup served on boiled meat days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,488 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mutton Diet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Serve 1 lb. of bread.

  2. Prepare ½ lb. of roast mutton, boiled on Tuesdays.

  3. Cook ¼ lb. of potatoes.

  4. Serve 1 pint of soup on boiled meat days.

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. Bread + muttontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Bread + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides starch and bulk as the base of the meal.
Roast mutton
Supplies the main protein and savoury flavour of the meal.
Potatoes
Adds starch and bulk alongside the meat and bread.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, mutton, meat):

  1. Tomatofits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, mutton, meat. 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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