Name: Stuffing for Turkey
Ingredients: 1 loaf very dry bread; 1 small grated onion; 1 quart oysters; 3 beaten eggs; ½ cup melted butter; 1 teaspoon powdered sage; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Stuffing for Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the dry bread in cold water and squeeze out excess water with your hands.
Mix the soaked bread with the grated onion, oysters, beaten eggs, melted butter, sage, salt, and pepper.

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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,628 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, oyster, egg, butter, sage, pepper):

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, oyster, egg, butter, sage, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.