Name: Pork Olives
Ingredients: slices of cold fresh pork; forcemeat; sage leaves; gravy or fresh lard; mashed turnips or potatoes

Why it works: Sage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 148 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pork Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Cut slices from a fillet or leg of cold fresh pork.
Make a forcemeat, substituting chopped sage leaves for sweet herbs.
Cover the pork slices with the forcemeat, roll them up, and tie them.
Stew the rolls slowly in cold gravy or fresh lard.
Drain well before serving.
Serve on a bed of mashed turnips or potatoes.

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.

Sage + turniptop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together148 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pork + turniptop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,358 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).