Name: Stuffing for Same
Ingredients: 1 cup cracker or stale breadcrumbs; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon thyme or marjoram; ½ cup melted butter; hot water (as needed)

Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffing for Same

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, thyme or marjoram.
Moisten the mixture with melted butter.
Add hot water if a moist stuffing is desired.

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.

Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,758 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs: Form the bulk of the stuffing and absorb the butter and water.
Melted butter: Moistens the crumbs and adds richness and fat to the stuffing.