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 ↓
Stewed Terrapin
Ingredients
Directions
Parboil the terrapin and then pick it into pieces.
Season the pieces with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.
Add chopped hard-boiled egg and white wine or champagne.
Boil until fully cooked.
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.
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,832 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,433 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Egg + white winetop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,662 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
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