Name: To Roast Wild Fowl
Ingredients: Wild fowl; Pepper; Coarse sea salt; Butter; Lemon; Onion; Hot water

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 ↓

To Roast Wild Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Remove gills from the wild fowl.
Season the inside with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a piece of butter.
Place an onion and hot water in the dripping pan and baste the fowl for the first 10 minutes.
Remove the pan and baste constantly with butter until cooked.
Serve with a squeeze of lemon, pepper, and salt on the sliced breast.

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).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + oniontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,646 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).