Name: Blood Pudding
Ingredients: fresh hog blood; rice or oatmeal; beef fat, chopped small; coarse sea salt; black pepper; sage; chopped red pepper pod

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Blood Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Catch the blood as it runs from the hog and stir it constantly until perfectly cold.
Thicken the blood with rice or oatmeal.
Add chopped beef fat and season with salt, pepper, sage, and chopped red pepper pod.
Fill large casings with the mixture and prick them with a fork to prevent bursting.
Boil the filled casings and then smoke them.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,265 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + sagetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together219 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).