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Dinner

A dinner featuring grapes, buttered potatoes with milk gravy, poached eggs, lettuce salad, green peas, and cornbread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Serve a bunch of grapes as a starter.

  2. Melt fresh butter and pour over simmered potatoes.

  3. Prepare milk gravy and serve over the potatoes.

  4. Poach eggs and place on a plate.

  5. Toss lettuce salad and serve alongside.

  6. Cook green peas and serve warm.

  7. Slice cornbread and serve on the side.

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. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the substantial base of the dish, soaking up butter and gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the potatoes and carrying flavour.
Milk gravy
Adds moisture and creamy texture over the potatoes.
Eggs
Provide protein and a soft, runny yolk that enriches the plate.
Cornbread
Adds a crumbly, slightly sweet starch to serve alongside.

The step that matters

Poach eggs. Eggs poach best in gently simmering water, not a rolling boil, because high heat tears the whites apart. Gentle heat sets the white around the yolk while keeping the yolk soft.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, potato, milk, egg, lettuce, peas, cornbread):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Pumpkinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, potato, milk, egg, lettuce, peas, cornbread. 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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