Why it works: Capers and watercress share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 60 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Peel and slice the cucumber lengthwise, then cut each half crosswise into two pieces.
Notch each end with a slicer and scoop out the center.
Lay the cucumber pieces on a leaf of watercress.
Fill each piece with tartar sauce.
Lay finely cut strips of pimentos diagonally across the top, placing a caper between each strip.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Capers + watercresstop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together60 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Parsley + caperstop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together1,550 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Parsley + watercresstop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together469 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cucumber + watercresstop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together140 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Sauce + caperstop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together678 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Flavor stand-ins for the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, sauce, parsley, capers, watercress):
- Horseradishbetter flavor fit
- Shallotbetter flavor fit
- Lettucebetter flavor fit
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sauce, parsley, capers, watercress. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
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