Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓
Broiled Fowl and Mushrooms
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the leg bones from the fowl and place it on a roasting spit.
Roast the fowl, basting it well with butter.
When half done, finish cooking it on a grill.
Season the fowl with white pepper and coarse sea salt on both sides.
In a saucepan, add the slice of ham, butter, pepper, and salt, and simmer gently for 15 minutes.
Stir in the flour, then add the stock and coulis, cooking for a few minutes.
Squeeze in the lemon juice and add a pinch of sugar.
Serve the sauce over the fowl.
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.
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,475 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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 white pepper
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, pepper, flour, lemon, sugar):
- Parsleyfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Marjoramfits better
- White pepperthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, pepper, flour, lemon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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