Name: Baked Haddock with One Egg
Ingredients: 1 coffee cup (about 1.5 cups) bread crumbs; ½ cup butter; 1 tablespoon savory herbs; rind of ½ lemon, grated; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 1 egg yolk; 1 egg white for brushing; additional bread crumbs for topping

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 ↓

Baked Haddock with One Egg

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, butter, savory herbs, grated lemon rind, salt, pepper, and egg yolk.
Fill the haddock with the mixture.
Brush the outside of the fish with egg white and sprinkle with additional bread crumbs.
Place the fish in a long pan or curl the tail in its mouth and place in a round pan.
Bake until golden brown.
Serve with anchovy, Béchamel, or caper sauce.

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).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 (coffee, bread, butter, pepper, egg):

Lemonthe original
Figfits about as well
Vanillafits less well
Grapefits less well

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