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Dinner for 8 Persons. June.

A menu for eight people featuring fish, eels, ox-piths, chickens, mutton, lamb cutlets, rabbits, quails, fritters, beans, peach jelly, and cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and rabbit share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 51 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Dinner for 8 Persons. June.

8 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Fish and eels

  1. Prepare the fish and eels.

  2. Spitchcock the eels and serve with piquante sauce.

Ox-piths and chickens

  1. Fry the ox-piths in batter and serve with tomato sauce.

  2. Cook the chickens and serve with a Spanish sauce.

Meats and game

  1. Boil the neck of mutton until tender.

  2. Bread crumb the lamb cutlets and fry until golden.

  3. Sauté the young rabbits with fine herbs and serve with green peas.

  4. Roast the quails until cooked through.

Sides and dessert

  1. Prepare an Italian salad as a side dish.

  2. Make fritters and serve them hot.

  3. Cook French beans in cream and serve as a side.

  4. Prepare peach jelly and serve with Queen's cakes.

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. Lamb + rabbittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Chicken + lambtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mutton + lambtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Tomato + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tomato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Batter
Forms a crisp coating that puffs and browns in hot fat.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and body to the dish.
Peach jelly
Sets into a sweet, softly firm gel.
French beans
Cooked in cream, they gain a rich, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Fry until golden. Breadcrumb coatings brown and crisp only in hot enough fat. If the fat is too cool, the coating soaks up oil and turns greasy and soggy instead of crisp.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sauce, tomato, chicken, mutton, lamb, rabbit):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peasthe original
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Chickpeafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sauce, tomato, chicken, mutton, lamb, rabbit. 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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