Name: Venison Fry
Ingredients: venison, cut into appropriate-sized pieces; coarse sea salt; black pepper; flour; butter; fried parsley, for garnish; rich brown gravy or other sauce (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Venison Fry

Ingredients

Directions

Season the venison pieces with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Place the venison in a napkin and shake it with a handful of flour.
In a frying pan, heat some butter and fry the venison until brown and crisp.
Dish up the venison in a pile and garnish with fried parsley.
Pour rich brown gravy or your choice of sauce underneath 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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, flour, butter, sauce):

Parsleythe original
Capersfits about as well
Nutmegfits about as well
Jalapenofits less well

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