Name: Venison Steaks, with Bacon
Ingredients: Venison steaks; Bacon slices; Stock or gravy; Cayenne pepper; Mace; Cinnamon; Cranberry jelly

Why it works: Cinnamon and cranberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 116 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Venison Steaks, with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Partly cook the venison steaks in a frying pan.
Place a slice of bacon on each side of the steaks.
Cook the bacon until browned; the steaks are ready to serve.
Serve with a bread sauce made from stock or gravy, flavored with cayenne, mace, and cinnamon.
Accompany with cranberry jelly.

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.

Cinnamon + cranberrytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together116 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,890 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Pepper + cranberrytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together218 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, cinnamon, cranberry):

Clovefits better
Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, cinnamon, cranberry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.