Name: Oyster Croquettes
Ingredients: 1 quart oysters; 1 egg; ½ bunch chopped parsley; 1 egg-sized piece of butter; ½ cup cream; ½ small onion, finely chopped; red pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; bread crumbs as needed

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oyster Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the oysters, then drain and chop them finely.
In a bowl, combine the chopped oysters, egg, parsley, butter, cream, onion, red pepper, and salt.
Add enough bread crumbs to hold the mixture together.
Mould the mixture into croquettes and roll them in bread crumbs.
Set aside to harden before frying.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, egg, parsley, butter, cream, pepper, bread):

Shallotfits better
Potatofits better
Asparagusfits better
Onionthe original

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