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Directions for Dinner and Evening Parties

A set of directions for preparing a dinner and evening party menu.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Directions for Dinner and Evening Parties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the main dishes

  1. Prepare the soup and fish as desired.

  2. Boil the ham until fully cooked.

  3. Boil the turkey and serve with oyster sauce.

  4. Roast the ducks until golden brown.

  5. Prepare the scalloped oysters in a baking dish.

Vegetables and dessert

  1. Cook the potatoes, parsnips, turnips, and celery until tender.

  2. Serve pudding, pastry, and fruit for dessert.

  3. Brew and serve 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsnip + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Ham + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Boiled until fully cooked, it becomes tender and ready to serve as the main meat.
Turkey
Boiling cooks the meat through, keeping it moist and tender when served with sauce.
Ducks
Roasting browns the skin and renders fat, giving a golden, crisp exterior.
Oysters
Baked in a dish, they cook through and firm up while the scalloped topping sets and browns.

The step that matters

Roast the ducks until golden brown. Ducks have a thick layer of fat under the skin. Roasting slowly lets that fat render out, which crisps the skin. Stopping too early leaves the skin pale and flabby, while cooking too long can dry the meat.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, ham, turkey, oyster, sauce, potato, turnip):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, ham, turkey, oyster, sauce, potato, turnip. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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