Name: Bread Stuffing for Turkey
Ingredients: 1 quart stale bread crumbs; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; ¾ teaspoon black pepper; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon powdered sage; 1 teaspoon summer savory; ½ cup butter

Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bread Stuffing for Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Break up the stale bread crumbs into very fine pieces.
In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs with salt, pepper, parsley, sage, summer savory, and butter.
Mix well until all ingredients are evenly incorporated.

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 + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together237 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together241 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, parsley, sage, butter):

Marjoramfits better
Thymefits better
Summer savorythe original
Tarragonfits less well

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