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Dinner for Twelve or Fourteen

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dinner for Twelve or Fourteen

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the loin from the mutton and roll it.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce.

  3. Prepare alamode beef or roast neck of veal with a rich sauce and mushrooms.

  4. Make veal patties and include ham.

  5. Cook mutton, stewed spinach, dressed lobster, and French beans.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together778 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + spinachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, tomato, sauce, beef, veal, mushroom, ham):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, tomato, sauce, beef, veal, mushroom, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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