Name: Stewed Sturgeons
Ingredients: sturgeon, cut into 1.5-inch thick slices; vinegar; flour; good broth; butter or cream; Harvey's sauce; ½ glass of wine; capers; lemon slices for garnish

Why it works: Capers and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Sturgeons

Ingredients

Directions

Dip the sturgeon slices in vinegar and dry them well.
Coat the slices in flour and broil them.
Place the broiled slices in a stewpan with good broth and let them stew gently until tender.
Thicken the gravy with butter or cream, then add Harvey's sauce and wine.
Serve topped with capers and garnished with lemon slices.

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.

Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,024 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,493 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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 lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, vinegar, flour, butter, sauce, wine, capers):

Lemonthe original
Avocadofits about as well
Plumfits less well
Raisinfits less well

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