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A Chinese Dinner in New York

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 27 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

A Chinese Dinner in New York

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Serve tea in fine china cups.

  2. Prepare cake and lichee nuts as appetizers.

  3. Serve sweetmeats alongside the main courses.

  4. Roast duck and chicken until fully cooked.

  5. Fry boned duck feet with mushrooms and bamboo shoots.

  6. Fry chicken bones in lard until soft, then dress with sweet pickle, ginger, and celery.

  7. Fry American pike with mushrooms and water lily potato.

  8. Cook cuttlefish with sweet turnips and suifun beans.

  9. Stew tchowmien macaroni with chicken, celery, and mushrooms.

  10. Prepare Chinese sausages as a side dish.

  11. Make citron soup with shrimps.

  12. Prepare lotus seed and apricot seed soup.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Bamboo shoots + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Bamboo shoots + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Tea + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, chicken, mushroom, bamboo shoots, ginger, celery, potato):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, chicken, mushroom, bamboo shoots, ginger, celery, potato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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