Name: Collops a Very Quick Fry
Ingredients: thin slices of meat; coarse sea salt; black pepper; ketchup (optional); gravy; bits of bacon (optional); lemon peel (optional); mace (optional); cream (optional)

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 ↓

Collops a Very Quick Fry

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the thin slices of meat for 2 minutes on each side.
Place them in a hot dish.
Strain and thicken the gravy in the frying pan, then bring it to a boil.
Pour the gravy over the meat.
For an alternative, season with salt and pepper, then simmer in gravy with bits of bacon.
If using white gravy, add lemon peel, mace, and cream.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ketchup + creamtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together279 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,009 recipes
Lemon + macetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,315 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Meat Croquettes52 recipes

Meatballs37 recipes

Mince Meat37 recipes

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Collops a Very Quick Fry