Name: Devilled Biscuit
Ingredients: cayenne pepper; anchovy paste; coarse sea salt; curry powder; captain's biscuits; butter; cheese; mustard

Why it works: Biscuit and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 121 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Devilled Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

Make a seasoning by mixing cayenne pepper, anchovy paste, coarse sea salt, and curry powder.
Butter the captain's biscuits generously.
Spread the seasoning mixture over the biscuits and grill them.
Alternatively, make a paste of cheese, mustard, and salt, and spread it over the biscuits when toasted.

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.

Biscuit + mustardtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together121 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,805 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together841 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, anchovy, biscuit, butter, cheese):

Mustardthe original
Spinachfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, anchovy, biscuit, butter, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.