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Ordering Dinner

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,047 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ordering Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare fillet of beef and serve with mashed potatoes and fried potato ribbons.

  2. Cook stewed celery or boiled seakale as a side.

  3. For Sunday, roast beef and serve with Yorkshire pudding, boiled potatoes, and Brussels sprouts.

  4. On Monday, roast loin of mutton and serve with potatoes and fritters.

  5. For Tuesday, serve cold beef with beef olives, potatoes, salad, and stewed fruit or pudding.

  6. On Wednesday, prepare hashed mutton or curry with vegetables and pudding or ramekins.

  7. For Thursday, cook rump steak with greens and potatoes, and serve with pudding or macaroni.

  8. On Friday, make soup and use any remaining cold meat for curry, served with vegetables and pudding.

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. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  2. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

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

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, celery, mutton, olive):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, celery, mutton, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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