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Cold Lunch for 50

A cold lunch for 50 people featuring beef, ham sandwiches, fowl salad, pastry tarts, butter, cake, ice cream, coffee, fruit, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,840 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Lunch for 50

serves 50

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Boil the salted round of beef.

  2. Press the beef while it cools.

  3. Prepare 300 ham sandwiches using the cooked ham.

Make the salad and pastries

  1. Make a salad with the cooked fowls, celery, and cabbage.

  2. Bake 300 puff pastry tarts filled with apple jam.

Set out and serve

  1. Set out 10 pounds of butter and 30 pounds of cake on the table.

  2. Serve 6 gallons of ice cream.

  3. Brew 15 gallons of coffee.

  4. Serve the coffee with 1½ pounds of sugar.

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. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Salted round of beef
Main protein; boiling and pressing firm it into a sliceable, cohesive texture as it cools.
Bakers' loaves of bread
Provides the structure for the sandwiches and holds the fillings together.
Ham
Main cured meat filling for the sandwiches, adding savory flavor and salt.
Cooked fowls
Main protein in the salad, supplying savory meat and body.
Puff pastry
Layered dough that puffs and browns in the oven, giving the tarts a flaky texture.
Apple jam
Sweet, fruity filling that adds sweetness and moisture to the baked tarts.

The step that matters

Press the beef while it cools. Pressing while the cooked beef cools compacts the meat and helps it set into a firm, even shape that slices cleanly. Pressing too early, before the meat has cooled enough to hold its shape, can squeeze out juices and leave it crumbly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, ham, celery, apple, butter, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, ham, celery, apple, butter, cream. 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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