Name: A Full Course Dinner
Ingredients: Little Neck Clams or Bluepoints; brown bread; sherry wine

Why it works: Bread and sherry work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 682 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

A Full Course Dinner

Ingredients

Little Neck Clams or Bluepoints
brown bread
sherry wine

Directions

Serve Little Neck Clams or Bluepoints with brown bread sandwiches.
For a gentlemen's dinner, serve canapes with sherry wine before guests enter the dining room.

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.

Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together682 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clam + sherrytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together32 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Clam + breadtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together125 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Bread + winetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together956 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Clam + winetop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together97 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).