Name: Kedgeree
Ingredients: 1 ounce butter; 4 ounces cooked rice; 5 to 6 ounces cooked fish (flaked or diced); Salt and pepper to taste; A dash of nutmeg or cayenne; 2 hard-boiled eggs

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Kedgeree

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dish

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add the cooked rice and stir for 1 minute.
Mix in the cooked fish, salt, pepper, and nutmeg or cayenne.
Stir in the diced hard-boiled eggs until heated through.

Serve

Serve hot, garnishing with egg whites on top and yolks sprinkled over.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + fishtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together270 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the rice coat evenly.
Cooked rice: Forms the body of the dish, absorbing the butter and seasoning.
Cooked fish: Supplies the main protein and savoury flavour, flaking into the rice.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add soft texture and richness, with the yolks giving a creamy finish.