Name: Lemon Pigs
Ingredients: 1 lemon; 2 small cloves; 4 matches; sardines

Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lemon Pigs

Ingredients

1 lemon
2 small cloves
4 matches
sardines

Directions

Cut a slit underneath one end of the lemon to create a snout.
Insert the cloves above the slit for eyes.
Use the matches for feet.
Hold the lemon over the sardines and squeeze the sides to release the juice from the mouth.

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 + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon: Its juice adds acidity and brightness to the sardines when squeezed over them.
Sardines: The main food, whose oily flesh is seasoned by the lemon juice.

“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.