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Menu for a Party of Eight

A menu featuring cutlets in gravy, béchamel, rice, peas, flageolets, French beans, carrots, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,017 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Menu for a Party of Eight

serves 8

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Stew the cutlets in gravy until tender.

  2. Remove the cutlets and let them cool under a weight.

  3. Mask one side of the cutlets with reduced béchamel or Espagnole sauce.

  4. Let the masked side set.

  5. Trim the edges of the cutlets neatly.

Make the rice socle

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice gently with a little salt until soft.

  3. Pound the rice.

  4. Mold the rice into a circle about 3 inches high with a hollow center.

  5. Coat the socle with butter or white sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets around the outer edge, masked sides out.

  2. Fill the hollow center with a mixture of cold cooked peas, flageolets, French beans, and carrot shapes.

  3. Keep the completed dish in the ice box until serving.

  4. Prepare the mayonnaise dressing separately.

  5. Pour the mayonnaise dressing over the salad just before serving.

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. Rice + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

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

  2. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  3. Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 recipes

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

  4. Rice + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

  5. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cutlets
Provide the main meat, which is stewed until tender and then masked and arranged around the dish.
Rice
Forms the molded base, and pounding it helps bind it into a firm, shapeable socle.
Reduced béchamel or espagnole sauce
Masks the cutlets with a smooth, set coating that gives a neat, even finish.
Butter or white sauce
Coats the rice socle, adding richness and moisture to its surface.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess to the vegetable salad filling.

The step that matters

Let the masked side set. If the sauce coating is not fully set before the cutlets are handled and arranged, it can smear or slide off. Letting it firm up first keeps the masked surface neat.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, rice, butter, beans, carrot, cream):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, rice, butter, beans, carrot, cream. 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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