Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Lunch No. 3
Ingredients
Directions
Remove gills from oysters and serve with lemon and crackers.
Serve cold veal with jelly and Saratoga potatoes.
Serve bread and butter on the side.
For dessert, serve cherry pie with cheese.
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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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,130 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Lemon + cherrytop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,301 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Potato + cherrytop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together241 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the cherry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, lemon, veal, potato, bread, butter, cheese):
- Figfits better
- Applefits about as well
- Grapefits about as well
- Cherrythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, lemon, veal, potato, bread, butter, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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