Name: Croquettes De Homard
Ingredients: meat of a 4 lb lobster, boiled; coarse sea salt to taste; cayenne pepper to taste; nutmeg to taste; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 tablespoon butter; 2 tablespoons flour; 1 slice onion, chopped and fried; 1 cup milk

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Croquettes De Homard

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the lobster and onion as finely as possible.
In a saucepan, blend the butter and flour over medium heat without browning.
Gradually stir in the boiling milk to create a sauce.
Add the chopped lobster, fried onion, parsley, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg to the sauce.
Mix well and allow to cool before shaping into croquettes.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, butter, flour):

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.