Name: Chestnut Forcemeat for Turkey
Ingredients: Spanish chestnuts; gravy; butter; bread crumbs; pepper; salt; nutmeg; 2 egg yolks

Why it works: Chestnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 180 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Chestnut Forcemeat for Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Scald the chestnuts to remove the woolly outer skin.
Drain and stew the chestnuts in gravy until tender.
Mash the chestnuts and mix with an equal quantity of butter and bread crumbs.
Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.
Bind the mixture with 2 egg yolks.

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.

Chestnut + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together180 recipes

Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together826 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Chestnut + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together191 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 (butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, egg):

Walnutfits about as well
Almondfits about as well
Chestnutthe original
Pecansfits about as well

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