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Menu for a Christmas Dinner

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Menu for a Christmas Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the celery as a side dish.

  2. Roast the turkey until fully cooked.

  3. Make potato croquettes and fry until golden.

  4. Bake sweet potatoes until tender.

  5. Prepare cranberry sauce to serve with turkey.

  6. Toast the birds and serve on toast.

  7. Cook corn and peas until tender.

  8. Serve pickles as a condiment.

  9. Prepare plum jelly and pudding for dessert.

  10. Bake mince pie and cream pie.

  11. Serve cheese, fruits, and nuts as a platter.

  12. Brew coffee to serve hot.

  13. Bake a fruit cake for dessert.

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. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sweet potato + cranberrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Celery + sweet potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, turkey, potato, sweet potato, cranberry, sauce, corn):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turkey, potato, sweet potato, cranberry, sauce, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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