Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Cod Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Salt the cod well and let it sit overnight.
Wash the cod and season it with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.
Place the cod in a dish, add butter and a little broth.
Cover the dish with a crust.
After baking, prepare a sauce with broth, cream, flour, butter, lemon zest, and nutmeg, and bring it to a boil.
Optionally, add oysters or parsley for extra flavor.
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.
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together11,318 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together13,015 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, butter, cream, flour):
- Lemonthe original
- Raisinfits about as well
- Limefits about as well
- Coconutfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, butter, cream, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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