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Chinese

Duck Chop Suey

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 16,001 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe.

Recipe from a historical cookbook.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

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

  2. Lotus + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17 recipes

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

  3. Celery + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,139 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,430 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,506 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mushroom, celery, lotus, bamboo shoots, rice):

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom, celery, lotus, bamboo shoots, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).