Name: Spi Coriander Seeds
Ingredients: 453 g coriander seeds; 2 lbs salt; 1 oz powdered sage; 1 oz long pepper; ½ oz cloves; ¼ oz mace; ¼ oz coriander seeds; 2 tablespoons bay rum

Why it works: Sage and rum work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and 14 recipes mention both. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices

Pound coriander seeds in a mortar and pass through a fine sieve.
Pound any large pieces that remain, pass through the sieve again, and store in tightly corked bottles.

Mix and bottle

Moisten the salt with bay rum, dry it, and mix with the ground spices.
Bottle the mixture and use as needed.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Sage + rumtop 19% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together14 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,199 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Sage + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together5,388 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together13,144 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Coriander + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together5,948 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Coriander seeds: Provides the main aromatic flavour of the blend.
Salt: Seasons the blend and adds savoury flavour to the spices.
Bay rum: Moistens the salt so the spices are evenly distributed in the blend.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coriander, sage, pepper, clove, rum):

Allspicebetter flavor fit
Gingerbetter flavor fit
Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coriander, sage, pepper, clove, rum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.