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Ordinary Diet

A daily diet plan including bread, meat, potatoes, soup, and beef tea.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Ordinary Diet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Serve 1 lb of bread with your choice of meat.

  2. Prepare ½ lb of meat by using 2 days of roast mutton, 1 day of boiled mutton, and 4 days of boiled beef.

  3. Cook ½ lb of potatoes as a side dish.

  4. On days with boiled meat, serve 1 pint of soup.

  5. Prepare 1 pint of beef‑tea to accompany 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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Potato + teatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

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

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

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

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, meat, mutton, beef, tea. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More ordinary diet recipes

Half 4 See all 17 →

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