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Picnic Lunch for Twenty-five

A picnic lunch for twenty-five people, including sandwiches, chicken, eggs, pickles, salad, ice cream, cakes, and salted almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 166 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Picnic Lunch for Twenty-five

serves 25

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 6 dozen sandwiches.

  2. Press 2 cooked chickens and slice them.

  3. Hard boil 25 eggs and peel them.

  4. Make or buy ½ gallon of salad.

  5. Bake or buy 2 medium sized cakes.

Serve

  1. Serve 1 quart of cucumber pickles.

  2. Chill and serve 1 gallon of ice cream.

  3. Serve ½ pound of salted almonds.

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. Cucumber + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Chicken + cucumbertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Chicken + almondtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together838 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Hard boiling sets the whites firm so the eggs can be peeled and sliced cleanly.
Cooked chickens
Pressing flattens the meat into an even layer that slices neatly for sandwiches.
Ice cream
Chilling keeps the dessert firm and holds its creamy texture until serving.

The step that matters

Chill and serve 1 gallon of ice cream. Ice cream softens and can partly melt quickly at picnic temperatures. Keeping it cold until serving preserves its firm, smooth texture and prevents it from becoming icy when refrozen.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, cream, almond):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, cream, almond. 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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