Name: Canapes of Sardines
Ingredients: 9 slices stale madeira cake; butter for frying; sifted sugar; 9 half peaches (preserved); apricot jam; madeira wine

Why it works: Peach and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Canapes of Sardines

Ingredients

Directions

Cut 9 round slices from the stale madeira cake, each 2.5 inches in diameter and 0.375 inches thick.
Fry the cake slices in butter until golden, then dust with sifted sugar and dry in the oven.
Let the cake slices cool and arrange them in a circle on a flat dish.
Drain the preserved peaches and turn the syrup into a thick glaze by adding apricot jam and flavoring with madeira.
Cool the glaze and then coat the peaches with it.

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.

Peach + apricottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together342 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together860 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,458 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, apricot, madeira wine):

Vanillafits about as well
Peachthe original
Applefits about as well
Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, apricot, madeira wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.