Name: Succotash
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon sugar; 1 teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 beaten egg; ½ cup milk; 2 tablespoons butter; Optional: lemon juice; Optional: canned sweet corn

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Succotash

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine sugar, salt, and pepper.
Add the beaten egg, milk, and melted butter; mix well.
If desired, add a little lemon juice.
For a winter variation, stir in canned sweet corn.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, egg, milk, butter, corn):

Vanillafits about as well
Lemonthe original
Coconutfits about as well
Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, egg, milk, butter, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.