Name: Baked Sheets
Ingredients: clarified butter; salt; mace; cayenne pepper; fine bread crumbs; sherry (optional); essence of anchovies (optional); lemon juice (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 ↓

Baked Sheets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish as for frying.
Pour some clarified butter into a baking dish.
Arrange the fish neatly in the dish with tails meeting in the center.
Season with a mixture of salt, mace, and cayenne pepper.
Cover the fish with a thick layer of fine bread crumbs.
Moisten the crumbs evenly with clarified butter poured through a small strainer.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the crumbs are light brown, about 10 minutes.

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).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,505 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together682 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper 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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mace, pepper, bread, sherry):

Figfits better
Plumfits about as well
Applefits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mace, pepper, bread, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.