Name: Small Oyster Patties
Ingredients: 2 dozen small oysters; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons caviar; crumbs of bread

Why it works: Butter and bread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,145 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Small Oyster Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

Pick out the smallest oysters and boil them.
Remove the gills from the oysters.

Make the filling

Make a sauce by adding butter, caviar, pepper, and salt to the oyster liquor.
Prepare about 2 dozen small pastry shells.
Fill each shell with oysters and enough sauce to fill them.

Finish and serve

Fry bread crumbs until golden and sprinkle over the filled patties.
Serve the patties very 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Butter + breadtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,145 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Oyster + caviartop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together16 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + caviartop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together107 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Oyster + breadtop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,544 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + buttertop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,175 recipes

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