Name: Roast Ducks
Ingredients: 2 ducks; 1 cup mashed potatoes; 1 cup chopped sage; 1 onion, chopped; coarse sea salt, to taste; pepper, to taste; slices of sweet fat pork; 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce; apple sauce, for serving

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 ↓

Roast Ducks

Ingredients

Directions

Clean and truss the ducks nicely.
Stuff the ducks with a mixture of mashed potatoes, sage, and onion, seasoned with salt and pepper.
Place the ducks in a pan and baste them with slices of sweet fat pork, basting frequently.
Make a rich gravy and stir in Worcestershire sauce.
Serve the ducks with apple sauce.

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).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,668 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

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

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, sage, onion, pepper, pork, sauce):

Limefits better
Avocadofits better
Lemonfits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, sage, onion, pepper, pork, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.