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Dinner for 14 Persons. December.

A multi-course dinner for fourteen featuring game stock, lasagna sheets, lentils, fish, poultry, vegetables, puddings, pies, and a Frangipane tart.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and whiting match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Dinner for 14 Persons. December.

serves 14

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the game stock and cook the lasagna sheets until al dente.

  2. Cook the lentils until soft.

  3. Sear the John Dory and serve with lobster sauce.

  4. Pan-fry the whitings and serve with a garnish.

  5. Roast the ham and steam the Brussels sprouts.

  6. Roast the turkey and prepare the white pudding.

  7. Sear the veal cutlets and serve with a side of vegetables.

  8. Cook the fillets of grouse and serve with ravioli and mushrooms.

  9. Roast the wild ducks until golden brown.

  10. Chill the iced pudding and serve with mince pies.

  11. Prepare the Jerusalem artichokes and serve with lemon jelly.

  12. Make potato croquettes and serve with cherry tartlets and pistachio cream.

  13. Bake the Frangipane tart.

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. Sauce + whitingtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lobster + whitingtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Fish + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

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

  5. Ham + turkeytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Lasagna sheets
Form the pasta structure of the dish, holding their shape when cooked to al dente.
Lentils
Provide body and a soft, tender texture when cooked until soft.
Brussels sprouts
Add a tender vegetable texture when steamed, with mild sweetness.
Veal cutlets
Brown on the outside when seared, giving savoury flavour and a firm bite.
Wild ducks
Brown well when roasted, developing rich, savoury flavour through browning.
Frangipane
Sets in the oven to a rich, almond-flavoured filling for the tart.

The step that matters

Roast the wild ducks until golden brown. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction on the surface, which needs dry heat. Undercooking leaves the meat pale and flat in flavour, while overcooking dries out the lean meat.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, fish, lobster, sauce, whiting, ham, turkey):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, fish, lobster, sauce, whiting, ham, turkey. 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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