Name: How We Cook in Tennessee
Ingredients: one cupful of milk; a piece of fresh pork; a piece of bacon; a piece of meat one hour; a teaspoonful of salt; two level tablespoonfuls butter; salt; pepper

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

How We Cook in Tennessee

Ingredients

Directions

Beets, boiled, one hour if young; if old, two to three hours.
Parsnips, young, forty-five minutes.
Turnips, one to two hours.
Cabbage, young, one hour; old, two hours.
Celery, twenty to thirty minutes.
Squash, sixty minutes.
Turnips. — Wash, peel, cut in thin slices across the grain, and put in kettle with a piece of fresh pork. When the water has stewed down low, mash the turnips and season with salt and pepper. Set back on the range and stir frequently until the water is all dried out. Do not boil too long, as they are much sweeter when cooked quickly. They will require from forty minutes to one hour to cook.
Turnip Salad. — First boil a piece of bacon or jowl one-half hour, then add salad; boil one hour or more, till tender. Dip out with perforated skimmer, lay in deep dish, cover with- nicely poached eggs, or serve eggs on another dish if preferred'.
Cornfield Peas. — Boil a piece of meat one hour. Put in the peas, boil one hour or more, adding salt just before they are done. Drain and serve.
To Boil Green Peas. — Shell and lay your peas in cold water till half hour before dinner. Then put in boiling water and boil half hour steadily. Add a little salt just before taking them from the fire. Drain, add tablespoon fresh butter and put in covered dish.
Creamed Peas. — Put two level tablespoonfuls butter and two of flour in a saucepan ; warm just a little ; mix until smooth ; add one cupful of milk ; stir until boiling. Open a can of peas ; turn them into the colander and pour over a little cold water; drain, turn them into the cream sauce ; add half a teaspoonful of salt, and stand them on the back of the stove to heat.
Green Peas. — Shell peas and wash in cold water; cook in just enough boiling water to keep them from burning; boil

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

542Calories

38 gProtein

37 gFat

14 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Pork	100g cooked	242
Milk	1 cup (244ml) whole	149
Butter	1 tbsp (14g)	102
Bacon	1 slice cooked (8g)	43
Black Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0
Meat	not in our table	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Jackson (Tenn.). First Baptist Church. The Silver Thimble Society. 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. See the original page.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,208 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,386 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

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