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Smoked Salmon Pasta with Rocket, Red Onion & Capers

Stuck with a glut of smoked salmon after Christmas? Use it up in this easy, but indulgent, pasta dish

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Why it works: Capers and pasta share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 89 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 2

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Capers + pastatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Salmon + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Lemon + pastatop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, onion, capers, pasta):

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Pumpkinabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, onion, capers, pasta. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).