Name: Stewed Rock
Ingredients: 6 large onions, sliced; ¾ pound butter; 1 quart water; 2 teaspoons dried thyme; 2 teaspoons dried sweet marjoram; 1 dozen picked crabs (or 2 quarts oysters in winter); ½ cup walnut catsup; ⅓ cup mushroom catsup; 1⅓ cups port wine

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Stewed Rock

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the sliced onions in butter and flour until dark and crisp, but not burnt.
Place the browned onions in a fish kettle and lay the fish on its belly.
Cover the fish with lard or butter to prevent the skin from breaking.
Pour in the quart of water steeped with thyme and marjoram.
Cover and cook very slowly for 2 hours.
Just before serving, add the crabs (or oysters), walnut catsup, mushroom catsup, and port wine.

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.

Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,225 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).
Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Marjoram + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together424 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, thyme, marjoram, crab, mushroom, port wine):

Beansfits about as well
Walnutthe original
Chestnutfits about as well
Peasfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, thyme, marjoram, crab, mushroom, port wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.