Name: Vegetarian Meat Loaf
Ingredients: 2 cups dried bread crumbs; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 cup nut butter; ½ teaspoon celery salt; 1 beaten egg; a few grains of pepper; ½ teaspoon sage; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; milk or water to moisten

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetarian Meat Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the ingredients in the order given.
Knead the mixture and shape it into a loaf.
Place the loaf in a well-greased pan.
Bake, basting often.

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.

Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Sage + parsleytop 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).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the celery

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

Marjoramfits better
Thymefits better
Nutmegfits better
Celerythe original

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