Name: Little Pigs in Blankets
Ingredients: fat English bacon, very thinly sliced; large oysters; coarse sea salt; black pepper; toothpicks; slices of toast; parsley for garnish

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Little Pigs in Blankets

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Season the oysters with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Wrap each oyster in a slice of bacon and secure with a toothpick.
Heat a frying pan until very hot and add the wrapped oysters.
Cook for about 2 minutes until the bacon is crisp.
Serve immediately on small pieces of toast, garnished with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,663 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + parsleytop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,211 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).