Name: Menus for One Day for Six Persons
Ingredients: 3 cups Farina (cooked mush); 12 figs; 6 slices sautéed ham; 6 boiled potatoes; 12 slices toast; Butter; Sugar; Milk for cereal and coffee

Why it works: Butter and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

serves 6

Ingredients

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

Also mentioned in the method: bread

Directions

Prepare

Prepare 3 cups of cooked Farina and mix in 12 chopped figs.
Sauté 6 slices of ham until browned.
Boil 6 potatoes until tender.
Toast 12 slices of bread.

Serve

Serve with butter, sugar, and milk for the cereal and coffee.

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

Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together81,222 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + milktop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Fig + milktop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,025 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Milk + coffeetop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,201 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Potato + coffeetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together167 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Farina: Cooked cereal base that gives the breakfast its bulk and soft texture.
Figs: Add natural sweetness and a soft, chewy texture to the farina.
Ham: Sautéing browns the surface, adding savory flavor and a firmer bite.
Potatoes: Boiling until tender gives a soft, starchy side dish.
Bread (in the method): Toasting dries the surface, adding a crisp texture and browned flavor.

Flavor stand-ins for the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, potato, butter, sugar, milk, coffee):

Vanillabetter flavor fit
Appleabout as good a flavor fit
Figthe original
Grapeabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, potato, butter, sugar, milk, coffee. 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).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.