Name: Oyster Patties
Ingredients: liquor from oysters; grated rind of 1 lemon; a pinch of cloves; cayenne pepper; 1 tablespoon butter; flour; milk; oysters (cut in halves); hot patty shells

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Oyster Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Put the liquor from the oysters into a saucepan.
Add the grated rind of 1 lemon, a pinch of cloves, cayenne pepper, and 1 tablespoon of butter.
Thicken the mixture with a little flour.
If desired, add a little milk to make more sauce.
Add the oysters cut in halves to the sauce.
Serve hot in hot patty shells.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, lemon, pepper, butter, flour, milk):

Parsleyfits better
Marjoramfits better
Nutmegfits better
Clovethe original

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