Name: Burdwan Stew
Ingredients: 1 roasted or boiled fowl, cut into pieces; 1 cup soup; 24 anchovies; ⅓ cup white wine; 2 tablespoons melted butter; boiled or roasted onions; pickled oysters; cayenne pepper to taste; juice of ½ lemon

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 ↓

Burdwan Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Place the fowl pieces in a silver stewpan.
Add the soup, anchovies, white wine, melted butter, onions, pickled oysters, and cayenne pepper.
Stir and warm through.
Add lemon juice before serving.

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).
White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
White wine + oniontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,535 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies: Dissolve into the sauce to add savoury depth and salt.
Melted butter: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
White wine: Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich sauce.
Lemon juice: Adds fresh acidity that balances the richness of the stew.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, butter, oyster, pepper, lemon):

Shallotfits better
Asparagusfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, butter, oyster, pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.