Name: Potted Meat, Game, or Fish
Ingredients: any kind of cold meat; bay or savoury herbs; green parsley; bread; dry toast

Why it works: Meat and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Potted Meat, Game, or Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Warm the outsides of the molds slightly.
Turn the potted meat out to serve.
Garnish with branches of bay or savory herbs.
Cut thin slices and lay them in a dish, decorated with green parsley.
Spread the mixture between thin slices of bread or serve with dry toast.

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.

Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,040 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).