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Modern Cookery

Boiled potatoes served with strained lemon juice, optionally replaced by pale veal gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the potatoes thickly.

  2. Cut the slices into rounds using a small cutter.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the potatoes in water until hot.

  2. Serve with a dessert spoon of strained lemon juice added at the moment of serving.

  3. You may substitute pale veal gravy for the water.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

  3. Potato + vealtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, absorbing the cooking liquid and providing its starchy texture.
Strained lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the potatoes.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, veal):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, veal. 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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