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Chinese

Assorted Chow Mein Shang-Hai Style

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and bamboo shoots share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 11 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, peanut, shellfish, sesame (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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. Spinach + bamboo shootstop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Chicken + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,375 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + mushroomtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,171 recipes

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

  4. Pork + mushroomtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Liver + porktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, chicken, liver, pork, mushroom, onion, peanut oil):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, chicken, liver, pork, mushroom, onion, peanut oil. 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).