Name: Alligatoe Pears
Ingredients: very ripe pears; salt; pepper; vinegar; lemon

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Alligatoe Pears

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the outer green skin from the pears.
Slice the pears and arrange them on a serving dish.
Season the pears with salt, pepper, and vinegar.
Garnish with lemon slices cut in halves.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together942 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pear + vinegartop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Pear + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together320 recipes

Shared aroma: butanol (wine).