Name: Deviled Shrimps
Ingredients: canned or fresh shrimps; olive oil or melted butter; lemon juice; Worcestershire sauce; cayenne pepper; celery salt; buttered and toasted saltines or small snowflake crackers or thin slices of buttered bread

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 ↓

Deviled Shrimps

Ingredients

canned or fresh shrimps
olive oil or melted butter
lemon juice
Worcestershire sauce
cayenne pepper
celery salt
buttered and toasted saltines or small snowflake crackers or thin slices of buttered bread

Directions

Chop the canned or fresh shrimps finely.
Beat the chopped shrimps to a paste with olive oil or melted butter.
Season the mixture with lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, and celery salt.
Spread the mixture between buttered and toasted saltines, small snowflake crackers, or thin slices of buttered bread.

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).
Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,922 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, olive, sauce, pepper, celery, bread):

Avocadofits about as well
Lemonthe original
Limefits about as well
Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, olive, sauce, pepper, celery, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.