Name: How to Prepare Moulds with Aspic Jelly, for Salads
Ingredients: Aspic jelly; vegetables (your choice); truffles; capers; olives; whites of eggs; butter (for masking bread); cracked ice

Why it works: Capers and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

How to Prepare Moulds with Aspic Jelly, for Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the Aspic jelly and ensure it is clear and not too firm.
Place the mould in a pan with cracked ice to chill.
Pour cool Aspic jelly into the mould, rotating it to coat the sides and bottom evenly.
Drain and dry your vegetables on a napkin, then dip each piece in cool Aspic jelly.
Arrange the vegetables in the mould, alternating colors as desired.
Add another layer of Aspic jelly to line the mould, then set aside to cool.
Fill the center of the mould with your prepared salad.
Decorate with truffles, capers, olives, and whites of eggs if desired.
To serve, dip the mould in warm water, wipe it dry, and turn it out onto a serving dish.

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.

Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,209 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, olive, egg, butter, bread):

Capersthe original
Parsleyfits about as well
Nutmegfits less well
Thymefits less well

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