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Dinner Menu

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,047 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dinner Menu

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the roast turkey and stuff it with oyster dressing.

  2. Serve with cranberry sauce on the side.

  3. Make mashed potatoes and cook Lima beans until tender.

  4. Serve fresh celery alongside the meal.

  5. Bake hot light biscuits until golden brown.

  6. Slice the mince pie and serve with cheese and wafers.

  7. Brew coffee to serve with the meal.

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 + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Turkey + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Cranberry + celerytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Potato + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Cranberry + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, oyster, cranberry, sauce, potato, celery, biscuit):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, oyster, cranberry, sauce, potato, celery, biscuit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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