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Dietary Dinners, Composed of Light Solids

A light dinner featuring beef tea, toasted bread, boiled sole, mashed potatoes, custard, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dietary Dinners, Composed of Light Solids

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Prepare 1 cup of beef tea.

  2. Add a few pieces of toasted bread to the tea.

Cook and serve the main course

  1. Boil the sole until cooked through.

  2. Serve the boiled sole with melted butter on the side.

  3. Make mashed potatoes.

  4. Serve mashed potatoes alongside the boiled sole.

Dessert and drink

  1. Prepare boiled custard for dessert.

  2. Enjoy with a glass of Rhine wine or Moselle.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Tea + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Beef + teatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

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

What each ingredient does

Toasted bread
Soaks up the beef tea, adding body and softening the soup.
Boiled sole
Provides the main protein, cooked through by gentle boiling until firm and flaky.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour to the plain boiled fish.
Mashed potatoes
Adds starch and a soft, smooth texture that balances the fish.
Boiled custard
Sets with egg and milk proteins into a smooth, sweet, pourable dessert.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tea, bread, butter, wine):

  1. Tomatofits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tea, bread, butter, wine. 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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