Skip to main content

Traditional Prawn Cocktail

This recipe was cooked by amateur chefs as part of the BBC's Step Up to the Plate television programme.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,654 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 1
Prep30 min
Cook10 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Tomato + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,654 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together20,622 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,599 recipes

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

  4. Onion + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lemon + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,558 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, malt whisky, lettuce):

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Cherrybetter flavor fit
  3. Mangobetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, malt whisky, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).