Name: Venison Fry
Ingredients: Venison liver; Bacon; Pepper; Salt; Curly parsley

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 ↓

Venison Fry

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the liver into thin slices and place it between two plates while preparing the other parts.
Cut the bacon into lengths of about an inch and blanch it with the liver for about 15 minutes.
Fry the bacon first, then pour most of the bacon fat into a small pan.
Season the liver with pepper and salt, then fry it until cooked.
Place the cooked liver on a wire sieve to drain.
In the same pan, add the remaining bacon fat, heat it, and fry the other parts of the venison until browned.
Remove and place on the wire sieve.
Fry some dried curly parsley in lard until crispy.

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).
Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Venison + livertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together52 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,375 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together955 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).