Name: Tripe and Oysters
Ingredients: tripe; milk; water; blades of mace; oysters; butter; flour; salt; cayenne pepper

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tripe and Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the tripe in milk and water for 4 to 5 hours until tender.
Cut the tripe into small pieces.
Place the tripe in a stew pan and add enough milk to cover it along with a few blades of mace.
Let it stew for 5 minutes.
Add the oysters, a large piece of butter rolled in flour, and salt and cayenne pepper to taste.
Let it stew for another 5 minutes.
Skim off any fat that floats on the surface before serving in a tureen.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 mace

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

Nutmegfits better
Parsleyfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Macethe original

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