Why it works: Chestnut and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 826 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓
Chestnut Stuffing
Ingredients
Directions
Mash the cooked chestnuts until fine.
Mix in the sweet cream, bread crumbs, pepper, and salt.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together826 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Chestnut + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together191 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Chestnut + creamtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together643 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
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Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together21,449 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the chestnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, bread, pepper):
- Chestnutthe original
- Beansfits about as well
- Lima beansfits about as well
- Walnutfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, bread, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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