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Dinner for 12 Persons

A multi-course dinner for twelve, featuring clear soup, carrot puree, various fish and meat fillets, and a brown-bread souffle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Dinner for 12 Persons

serves 12

Ingredients

Directions

Soup and vegetables

  1. Prepare a clear soup.

  2. Serve it as the first course.

  3. Make a puree of carrots.

  4. Serve it warm.

Fish and beef

  1. Cook the fillets of whitings. Serve with a sauce.

  2. Prepare the John-dory fish with Dutch sauce.

  3. Braise the fillet of beef. Serve with Madeira sauce.

Poultry, game and meat

  1. Cook the poulards. Serve them hot.

  2. Prepare the boudins of pheasant. Serve them.

  3. Cook the fillets of pigeons. Serve them with a garnish.

  4. Prepare the mutton cutlets. Serve with sides.

  5. Make marrow patties. Serve with fine-herbs sauce.

  6. Cook the teal. Serve as a roast.

Dessert

  1. Prepare a brown-bread souffle. Serve as dessert.

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. Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + pheasanttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Carrot + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Brown bread
Forms the body of the souffle, giving a light, set texture and a nutty flavour.
Carrots
Puréed to give the soup and vegetable course body, sweetness and smooth texture.
Madeira sauce
Adds a rich, slightly sweet, wine-based flavour that complements the braised beef.

The step that matters

Braise the fillet of beef. Braising needs low, moist heat over a long time so connective tissue softens and the meat stays tender rather than dry and tough.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, fish, beef, sauce, pheasant, mutton, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, fish, beef, sauce, pheasant, mutton, bread. 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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