Name: Devilled Chestnuts
Ingredients: chestnuts; butter; salt; red pepper

Why it works: Chestnut and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 826 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Devilled Chestnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

chestnuts
butter
salt
red pepper

Directions

Boil and peel the chestnuts.
Fry the chestnuts in butter until brown.
Remove from heat and sprinkle with salt and red pepper.

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.

Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together826 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Chestnut + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together965 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).