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A hearty dinner featuring boiled chicken, calves' and sheep's feet, mutton broth, beef tea, fish, lamb, potatoes, asparagus, bread, rice pudding, roast apples, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and turbot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats and fish

  1. Boil the chicken until cooked through.

  2. Stew the calves' and sheep's feet until tender.

  3. Prepare mutton broth and beef tea.

  4. Boil soles, whiting, and turbot until flaky.

  5. Cook lamb until desired doneness.

Prepare the sides

  1. Boil potatoes until tender.

  2. Steam or boil asparagus until bright green.

  3. Roast apples until soft.

Serve

  1. Serve with light bread and rice pudding.

  2. Dilute wine with twice its quantity of water before serving.

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. Whiting + turbottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Chicken + lambtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' feet
Their gelatin gives body and a thick, silky texture to the stewed dish.
Sheep's feet
Their gelatin gives body and a thick, silky texture to the stewed dish.
Mutton broth
Provides savoury meat flavour and liquid moisture to the dish.
Light bread
Soaks up broth and provides a soft, starchy base to accompany the meats.
Rice pudding
Adds soft, starchy body and mild sweetness alongside the savoury dishes.
Roast apples
Their softened flesh adds natural sweetness and gentle acidity.

The step that matters

Stew the calves' and sheep's feet until tender. Feet are rich in collagen, which only turns to gelatin after long, gentle simmering. Stopping early leaves them tough and the broth thin.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mutton, beef, tea, whiting, turbot, lamb):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mutton, beef, tea, whiting, turbot, lamb. 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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