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Menu for a Dinner of Six

Bacon‑wrapped neck chops served with rice and macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Menu for a Dinner of Six

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the neck chops and layer them with bacon.

  2. Mix bread crumbs, parsley, shallot, and cheese in equal proportions.

  3. Coat the chops with the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the chops in hot fat until golden yellow.

  2. Serve the chops around a hollow mold of savoury rice, with macaroni in the center.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Shallot + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Bread + shallottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Wraps the chops and renders fat that keeps the meat moist and flavourful while frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the outside of the chops when fried.
Cheese
Melts into the crumb coating and adds savoury flavour and browning.
Shallot
Adds mild aromatic flavour to the coating.

The step that matters

Fry the chops in hot fat until golden yellow. Hot fat sears the crumb coating quickly, creating a crisp crust before the chops dry out. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy, and the meat cooks unevenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, shallot, cheese, rice):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, shallot, cheese, rice. 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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