Name: To Dish Up the Dinner
Ingredients: 4 soup plates; hot water; soup; mutton; gravy; potatoes; mashed turnips

Why it works: Potato and turnip work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Dish Up the Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Warm 4 soup plates in the oven or plate-warmer.
Rinse the soup tureen with hot water to warm it, then place it on the table.
Pour the soup quickly from the digester into the tureen, avoiding dribbles.
Examine the soup for grease or black particles and remove them with a spoon or blotting paper.
Cover the tureen and carry it to the table.
Announce that dinner is served and wait to hand out the soup.
Warm a large dish and two vegetable dishes.
Place the mutton on the hot dish, checking for cinders, and pour gravy around it.
Dish the potatoes one by one from the saucepan or steamer.
Turn out the mashed turnips from the saucepan.

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.

Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,558 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).