Name: Another Oyster Pie
Ingredients: pie crust; stale bread; oysters; butter (size of an egg); ½ teaspoon mace; ⅓ cup white wine; juice of 1 lemon; a little flour

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Another Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Line the pie dish halfway up with crust.
Fill the dish with pieces of stale bread.
Cover with a pie crust and bake for 15-20 minutes.
Prepare oysters as for pâté and fill the pie.
Serve hot.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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).

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 (bread, oyster, butter, egg, white wine, lemon, flour):

Parsleyfits better
Capersfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, oyster, butter, egg, white wine, lemon, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.