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Dinner for 12 Persons. August.

A menu of assorted dishes including fowl, fish, venison, oysters, poultry, mutton, peahen, grouse, custard fritters, apple pudding, and various sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 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. August.

12 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Soup and fish

  1. Prepare a consomme of fowl.

  2. Serve the consomme with quenelles.

  3. Fry the whitings.

  4. Serve the whitings with Dutch sauce.

Meat and game

  1. Roast the haunch of venison.

  2. Make oyster patties.

  3. Serve the oyster patties.

  4. Prepare capon with coarse sea salt.

  5. Make a Chartreuse.

  6. Serve the Chartreuse.

  7. Prepare fricandeau.

  8. Serve the fricandeau.

  9. Cook members of chickens with à la Marechale style.

  10. Prepare mutton cutlets with puree of turnips.

  11. Lard the peahen.

  12. Roast the peahen.

  13. Serve grouse as a second course.

Desserts

  1. Make custard fritters.

  2. Serve the custard fritters.

  3. Prepare apple pudding with apricot jam.

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. Whiting + charrtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + charrtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Venison + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Turnip + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Haunch of venison
Lean meat that browns on the outside while its inside stays tender when roasted.
Oysters
Briny flavour and a soft, tender texture when cooked in patties.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, silky texture to dishes.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity, and gives a glossy finish.
Puree of turnips
Gives a smooth, soft texture and a mild sweetness to the cutlets.
Peahen
Lean game that larding with fat keeps moist during roasting.

The step that matters

Roast the peahen after larding. Peahen is very lean, so it dries out quickly in the oven. Larding it with fat before roasting helps keep the meat moist and tender.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, sauce, charr, venison, oyster, chicken, turnip):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, sauce, charr, venison, oyster, chicken, turnip. 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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