Name: Salmon Pie
Ingredients: 1 piece of salmon; 1 pint of picked shrimps; ½ pound of butter; a little mace; pepper to taste; ¼ teaspoon of salt; ½ cup of water; 1 tablespoon of vinegar

Why it works: Shrimp and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,931 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Salmon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the salmon, remove the skin, and cut it into small slices.
Pound the shrimps in a mortar with the butter, mace, pepper, and salt.
Layer the salmon in a dish, placing the pounded shrimps between each layer.
Boil the shrimp skins in water with vinegar.

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.

Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Salmon + shrimptop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together819 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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 mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, shrimp, butter, pepper, vinegar):

Dillfits better
Garlicfits better
Tarragonfits better
Macethe original

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