Name: Creole Kedgeree
Ingredients: 1 cup cold salmon or codfish steak, flaked and freed from bone; 1 cup cold boiled rice; 1 cold boiled egg, chopped fine; ½ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; 1 tablespoon butter; ¼ teaspoon curry powder (optional)

Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Creole Kedgeree

Ingredients

1 cup cold salmon or codfish steak, flaked and freed from bone
1 cup cold boiled rice
1 cold boiled egg, chopped fine
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon butter
¼ teaspoon curry powder (optional)

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, mix the flaked fish, cold rice, chopped egg, salt, cayenne pepper, butter, and curry powder if using.

Cook and serve

Cook the mixture in a skillet over medium heat for 3 minutes, stirring gently.
Serve with thin slices of nicely browned buttered toast.

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.

Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,485 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon or codfish: Provides the main protein and flaky texture of the dish.
Cold boiled rice: Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a light, separate-grained texture.
Boiled egg: Adds richness and a soft, crumbly texture throughout the mixture.
Butter: Adds richness and helps coat the rice and fish as they warm.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.