Name: Cardoons with Marrow
Ingredients: 1 tin cardoons; well-flavoured stock; large pieces of marrow; cold water; coarse sea salt; butter; bread

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Cardoons with Marrow

Ingredients

Directions

Open the tin of cardoons and drain the liquor.
Place the cardoons in a stewpan and cover with well-flavoured stock.
Heat on the fire until warmed through.
Soak the marrow in cold water with salt for about 1 hour.
Drain and replace with fresh salted water, then bring to a boil.
Remove from heat and let the marrow sit in the water until needed.
Fry well-shaped sippets of bread in butter.
Cut the marrow and place a piece on each sippet.
Arrange the sippets on a dish, pour reduced brown sauce in the center, and lay the cardoons on top.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cardoon + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cardoon + buttertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).