Name: Liver of Herrings with Oysters
Ingredients: 3 pieces of bread (3 inches long, 1 inch wide, ½ inch deep); Soft roes of bloaters; 9 oysters; Butter (for sautéing); 1 lemon (for squeezing); Cayenne pepper (to taste)

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Liver of Herrings with Oysters

Ingredients

3 pieces of bread (3 inches long, 1 inch wide, ½ inch deep)
Soft roes of bloaters
9 oysters
Butter (for sautéing)
1 lemon (for squeezing)
Cayenne pepper (to taste)

Directions

Cut the bread into pieces and hollow out the center.
Fry the bread pieces in butter until crisp.
Sauté the oysters in butter for about 1 minute.
Fill the fried bread with soft roes and top with 3 oysters each.
Add a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of cayenne.
Serve very hot.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Roe + oystertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,545 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).