Name: Barbecue Meatballs
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon chopped onion; 1 teaspoon butter or margarine; 1/2 cup catsup; 2 teaspoons brown sugar; 2 teaspoons prepared mustard; 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce; 1/4 teaspoon garlic salt; 1 1/2 cups hot cooked rice

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, soy, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Cook onion in butter until transparent.
Add catsup, sugar, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and garlic salt. Cook 5 minutes to blend flavors.
Add meat balls. Baste with sauce. Cover and simmer 10 minutes.
Serve over fluffy rice.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together29,030 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Onion + mustardtop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together9,243 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + garlictop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Onion + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together9,990 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Mustard + saucetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,120 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, sugar, mustard, sauce, rice):

Capersabout as good a flavor fit
Cinnamonabout as good a flavor fit
Celeryabout as good a flavor fit
Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, sugar, mustard, sauce, rice. 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).