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A selection of dinner dishes such as roast beef, fowl, fish, and puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dinners

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Roast the beef until it is medium rare. Serve with gravy.

  2. In a large pot, boil the fowl in 3 quarts of water with 1 cup of rice, 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 onion, 2 turnips, and 2 carrots for flavor. If using an older chicken, boil for 2 hours; if younger, boil for 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve the fowl with drawn butter and boiled potatoes.

  4. Roast or boil a small leg of mutton. Serve with potatoes.

  5. Prepare fried or boiled fish as desired.

Make the sides and desserts

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Cook the macaroni or rice according to package instructions.

  3. Boil green peas until tender.

  4. Serve stewed tomatoes as a side.

  5. Prepare the tapioca pudding as directed on the package.

  6. Make a sago pudding according to package instructions.

  7. Make a baked bread pudding. Serve with cold sauce.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Roasting to medium rare keeps the meat tender and juicy, with browned surfaces.
Fowl
Long simmering in water softens the connective tissue, so the meat becomes tender.
Potatoes
Starch that softens when boiled, giving a mild, filling side dish.

The step that matters

Boiling the fowl for the right time. Older birds have tougher connective tissue and need longer simmering to become tender. Boiling too briefly leaves meat chewy, while overcooking can make it dry and stringy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, rice, onion, turnip, carrot, butter):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, rice, onion, turnip, carrot, butter. 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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