Name: Stuffing for Fowls
Ingredients: 1 pound stale bread, crust removed; ½ cup tepid water; ½ cup melted butter; 1 teaspoon grated onion; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon sage or other herb (optional); 3 dozen oysters (optional, whole or chopped)

Why it works: Parsley and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffing for Fowls

Ingredients

1 pound stale bread, crust removed
½ cup tepid water
½ cup melted butter
1 teaspoon grated onion
1 teaspoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon sage or other herb (optional)
3 dozen oysters (optional, whole or chopped)

Directions

Quickly dip the stale bread in tepid water and squeeze it dry.
Lightly shake the bread with your fingers to prevent packing.
Add melted butter, grated onion, chopped parsley, and optional herbs; mix well.
Do not overfill the fowl, as the stuffing will swell during cooking.
For oyster stuffing, add oysters to the bread mixture and reserve some for the gravy.

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.

Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,628 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, onion, parsley, oyster):

Capersfits better
Thymefits better
Garlicfits better
Sagethe original

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