Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Woodcock Broiled with Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Pick, singe, and draw the woodcocks, removing the eyes and skin from the heads.
Wipe the woodcocks and split them through the back without separating the parts.
Season with a pinch of coarse sea salt, half a pinch of black pepper, and 1 tablespoon of sweet oil.
Roll the woodcocks in the seasoning and place them on the grill with bills stuck into the breasts.
Broil for four minutes on each side.
Serve on a dish with drawn butter spread over and decorated with G slices of broiled bacon.
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.
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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