Name: Mushroom Stuffing
Ingredients: ½ cup chopped mushrooms; ½ cup fine breadcrumbs; 1 tablespoon finely chopped ham; 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley; a few grains powdered thyme; ¼ teaspoon lemon rind; small portion of onion

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mushroom Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the chopped mushrooms, breadcrumbs, ham, parsley, thyme, lemon rind, and onion thoroughly.
Fry the mixture in boiling fat.
Use as a stuffing for marrow, tomatoes, or large onions.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,557 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms: Provide the main body and earthy flavour of the stuffing.
Breadcrumbs: Absorb moisture and give the stuffing a light, soft body.
Ham: Adds savoury, salty flavour to the mixture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, ham, parsley, thyme, lemon):

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ham, parsley, thyme, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.