Name: Deviled Sardines
Ingredients: 1 box boneless sardines, drained and skinned; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon paprika or ½ teaspoon cayenne; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Deviled Sardines

Ingredients

1 box boneless sardines, drained and skinned
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon paprika or ½ teaspoon cayenne
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions

Melt the butter in a chafing dish until it is hissing hot.
Add the sardines and cook until heated through, turning once.
Sprinkle with salt and paprika, then add the lemon juice.
Serve on toast.

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.

Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sardines: Provide the main body and rich, oily flavor of the dish.
Butter: Carries heat to the sardines and adds richness and a savory, nutty flavor.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily fish.

The step that matters

Melt the butter until hissing hot. Butter must be hot enough to sear and warm the sardines quickly, so the fish heats through without turning soggy or greasy. Overly cool butter lets the fish steam in its own juices and lose texture.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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Deviled Sardines