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Dietary Dinners, Composed of Light Solids, More or Less Substantial in Their Quality

A light dinner featuring beef tea, toasted bread, boiled sole, mashed potatoes, boiled 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, More or Less Substantial in Their Quality

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 1 cup of Beef Tea and add a few pieces of toasted bread.

  2. Boil the Sole until cooked through.

  3. Make mashed potatoes and serve alongside.

  4. Prepare boiled custard for dessert.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter on the side.

  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

Sole
Provides the main protein of the meal, cooked by boiling until it is firm.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat to the fish when served melted.
Mashed potatoes
Adds starchy bulk that soaks up flavour and makes the meal filling.
Boiled custard
Provides a sweet, creamy dessert set by gently heated egg proteins.

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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