Name: Cold Potatoes with Spinach or Cabbage
Ingredients: cold potatoes; white sauce; cold cabbage or spinach; brown gravy

Why it works: Potato and cabbage work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 275 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Potatoes with Spinach or Cabbage

Ingredients

cold potatoes
white sauce
cold cabbage or spinach
brown gravy

Directions

Mash the cold potatoes and moisten them with a little white sauce.
Chop the cold cabbage or spinach very finely and moisten with brown gravy.
Layer the potatoes and cabbage in a tin mold.
Cover the top and place the mold in a pot of boiling water.
Let it heat until the vegetables are hot, then turn it out and serve.

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.

Potato + cabbagetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together275 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + saucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,073 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + cabbagetop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together437 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).