Name: Shad Roe with Scallops
Ingredients: Shad roe; Salt pork, diced (¼ cup); Mashed potatoes (for serving); 1 pint scallops

Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Shad Roe with Scallops

Ingredients

Shad roe
Salt pork, diced (¼ cup)
Mashed potatoes (for serving)
1 pint scallops

Directions

Prepare

Fry the shad roe with the diced salt pork until browned.
Prepare a bed of mashed potatoes and keep warm in the oven or by the fire.

Cook and serve

Once the roe is browned, lift it onto the mashed potatoes.
In the same pan, fry the scallops with the pork until tender and slightly browned.
Arrange the scallops and pork around the roe on the mashed potatoes and serve 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.

Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,668 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Roe + scalloptop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Roe + potatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Pork + scalloptop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together34 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Roe + porktop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad roe: Forms the main rich, delicate centrepiece that browns and firms when fried.
Salt pork: Renders fat into the pan, browning the roe and scallops and adding savoury flavour.
Scallops: Turn tender and lightly browned, adding sweet, delicate seafood flavour.

“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.