Name: Salmi of Woodcocks a LA Lucullus
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 yolk of egg; 1 tablespoon chopped blanched shallot; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg; a pinch of cayenne; fried bread (cut into hearts or fillets)

Why it works: Shallot and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salmi of Woodcocks a LA Lucullus

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Melt the butter in a pan.
Add the chopped shallot and sauté until soft.
Mix in the yolk of the egg, season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and cayenne.
Combine the mixture well and spread it on the fried bread pieces.
Shape the mixture to rise in the middle like a halved egg.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 5 minutes before serving.

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.

Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,898 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the shallot

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

Capsicumfits about as well
Spinachfits about as well
Shallotthe original
Asparagusfits about as well

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