Name: Iced Bouillon
Ingredients: strong beef bouillon; coarse sea salt; cayenne pepper; lemon juice; sherry; gelatin (1 teaspoon per pint); Boston brown bread

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 ↓

Iced Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare a strong, clear beef bouillon.
Season with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and sherry.
Strain the bouillon and add gelatin, stirring until dissolved.
Chill the bouillon cups thoroughly.
Fill the cups with the gelatin mixture, broken into bits.
Serve with strips of Boston brown bread.

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).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Sherry + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together682 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, sherry, gelatin, bread):

Figfits better
Pineapplefits about as well
Mangofits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, sherry, gelatin, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.