Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Cookery Up-to-date
Ingredients
Directions
Lay the items in melted butter for ten minutes.
Dust lightly with cayenne pepper.
Wrap securely in well-buttered or oiled white paper, stitching down the ends.
Fry in dripping, oil, or lard for about ten minutes, unless very thick.
Prepare clean, hot papers fringed at both ends.
Clip the threads of soiled papers after draining from fat.
Quickly slip the items into fresh covers, twist the fringed ends, and serve on a heated dish.
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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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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