Name: Broiled Squabs
Ingredients: Squabs; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Goose fat; Bread; Crabapple jelly

Why it works: Pepper and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Squabs

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the squabs and soak them in salt water for 10 minutes.
Pat them dry with a clean towel.
Split the squabs down the back and broil them over a clear coal fire.
Season with salt and pepper.
Place them on a heated platter and generously butter or grease with goose fat.
Cover with a deep platter.
Toast a piece of bread for each squab, removing the crust.
Dip the toast in boiling water for an instant.
Serve each squab on a piece of toast with crabapple jelly on the side.

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.

Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Squab + peppertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together35 recipes

Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).
Squab + breadtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).