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Her Majesty’s Dinner

A multi-course dinner featuring fish, poultry, meat, seafood, vegetables, desserts, and drinks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 25 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 ↓

Her Majesty’s Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Fish and poultry

  1. Prepare the fish by cleaning and seasoning it.

  2. Cook the eel stew and serve it alongside the fish.

  3. Fry the whiting fillets until golden brown.

  4. Prepare the trout sauce and pour it over the cooked trout.

  5. Roast the chicken and serve with macaroni.

Meats and sides

  1. Slow-cook the leg of mutton until tender.

  2. Glaze the ham and serve with peas.

  3. Sauté the lamb chops and serve with cucumbers.

  4. Prepare the rabbit fillets and serve with German sauce.

  5. Fry the veal brains and serve with tomato sauce.

  6. Cook the veal sweetbreads and serve with peas.

  7. Make a chicken fricassee and serve with rice.

  8. Roast the ducklings until crispy.

  9. Prepare the pudding and serve with fruit sauce.

Desserts

  1. Make a lemon soufflé and serve chilled.

  2. Prepare the fruit salad and serve as a side.

  3. Bake the plum tart and serve warm.

  4. Make raspberry bavarois and serve chilled.

  5. Prepare coffee cream and serve as a dessert.

  6. Make orange flower dumplings and serve as a sweet treat.

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. 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. Fish + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Chicken + muttontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together471 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting fillets
Frying browns the outside while the inside stays moist and tender.
Leg of mutton
Slow cooking breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender.
Whole chicken
Roasting browns the skin and cooks the meat through.
Ducklings
Roasting renders fat under the skin, which crisps the skin.
Veal brains
Frying browns the outside, adding a contrasting crisp texture.

The step that matters

Roast the ducklings until crispy. Duck skin holds a thick layer of fat that must render slowly. If the heat is too high, the skin burns while the fat stays unmelted, leaving it flabby and greasy.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Peasthe original
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits less well
  4. Almondfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, whiting, sauce, chicken, mutton, ham, lamb. 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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