Name: Oyster Rolls
Ingredients: very thin slices of bacon; essence of anchovy; lemon juice; cayenne pepper; oysters

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oyster Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the rind off the bacon slices.
Place two drops of essence of anchovy and four drops of lemon juice on each oyster.
Sprinkle a little cayenne pepper on each oyster.
Roll each oyster in a slice of bacon and skewer them.
Fry the rolls until cooked through.
Serve each roll on a toasted crouton while 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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Anchovy + oystertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together603 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,663 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).