Name: Boiled Bacon
Ingredients: cooked cauliflower; cooked brussels sprouts; boiled beans

Why it works: Cauliflower and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 290 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Bacon

Ingredients

cooked cauliflower
cooked brussels sprouts
boiled beans

Directions

Prepare tufts of cooked cauliflower or brussels sprouts.
Alternatively, place the bacon on a bed of boiled beans.

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.

Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Brussels sprouts + beanstop 35% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Cauliflower + brussels sproutstop 50% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together0 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).