Name: Fresh Pork Sausages
Ingredients: fresh pork, finely minced; spices (such as pepper, sage, nutmeg, cloves); herbs (such as onions, garlic, asafoetida)

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fresh Pork Sausages

Ingredients

fresh pork, finely minced
spices (such as pepper, sage, nutmeg, cloves)
herbs (such as onions, garlic, asafoetida)

Directions

Finely mince fresh pork.
Mix in spices and herbs to taste.
Stuff the mixture into sausage casings.
Tie off the ends and refrigerate until ready to cook.

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.

Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together642 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sage + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together731 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the asafoetida

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, sage, nutmeg, clove, onion, garlic):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Allspicefits better
Asafoetidathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, sage, nutmeg, clove, onion, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.