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Menu for a Dinner of Six

Fried neck chops coated in a breadcrumb, parsley, shallot, and cheese mixture, 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. Lard the neck chops with bacon and marinate them all day.

  2. Mix breadcrumbs, parsley, shallot, and cheese in equal proportions.

  3. Coat the marinated chops with the breadcrumb mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the chops in hot oil 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. Shallot + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cheese + ricetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Parsley + cheesetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,507 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Neck chops
Provide the main protein that is cooked and served as the centerpiece.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky flavor that carries into the meat during marinating.
Breadcrumbs
Form the crisp, golden coating when the chops are fried.
Cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the coating brown in the frying oil.
Shallot
Contributes mild aromatic sweetness to the breadcrumb coating.

The step that matters

Fry the chops in hot oil until golden yellow. If the oil is not hot enough, the breadcrumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp. Too hot, and the outside browns before the meat cooks through. Steady, moderate heat gives an even golden crust.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, 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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