Name: With Cauliflowers
Ingredients: 1 dozen cauliflowers; 2 sweetbreads; broth; salt; pepper; a few drops of lemon juice

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

With Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash and drain the cauliflowers with a coarse towel, wetted and salted.

Cook

Place the cauliflowers and blanched sweetbreads in a saucepan.
Cover with broth and boil until done.
Add salt, pepper, and lemon juice before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,113 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cauliflower + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together179 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

Cauliflowers: Forms the main bulk of the dish and absorbs the flavour of the broth as it cooks.
Sweetbreads: Provide the rich, tender meat that gives the dish its substance.
Broth: Cooks the vegetables and meat while adding savoury flavour and moisture.
Lemon juice: Adds a little acidity that brightens the rich flavours of the dish.