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Dinner As Dickens Ate

A hearty dinner featuring fowl, pigeon, gizzards, livers, roast beef, cheese, salt, pepper, and vegetables or rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dinner As Dickens Ate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a soup using the half fowl and flavor it with plenty of grated cheese, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew the pigeon and surround it with the gizzards and livers of various birds.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast a small piece of beef until cooked to your liking.

  2. Serve with a side of vegetables or rice.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Cheese + ricetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

  5. Beef + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

What each ingredient does

Half fowl
Provides the body and flavor base for the soup.
Grated cheese
Adds savory, salty depth and richness to the soup.
Pigeon
Serves as the stewed main meat of the meal.
Gizzards and livers
Add rich, deep, meaty flavor to the stewed pigeon.
Beef
Provides a roasted main meat cooked to the desired doneness.

“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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