Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓
Devonshire Squab Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Clean and boil the calfs head for 30 minutes. Cut it into thin dice.
In a tossing pan, combine the calfs head, veal gravy, sweetbread, morels, and truffles. Stew for 1 hour.
Boil and bone the calves feet, cut into small pieces, and add to the tossing pan with lemon pickle, browning, cayenne pepper, and salt.
Once the meat is tender, thicken the gravy with butter and flour, then strain it. Add pickled mushrooms if using.
Place the meat back into the pie shell, layering the nicest pieces on top. Pour in the gravy and sprinkle with asparagus heads.
Cover the dish with puff pastry, ensuring a good seal. Bake until golden brown.
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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Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,900 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Lemon + asparagustop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together704 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Mushroom + asparagustop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together400 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
More squab pie recipes
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