Name: Apple Stuffing for Duck
Ingredients: 5 sour apples, peeled, quartered, and cored; 1 cup bread crumbs; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon sage

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 ↓

Apple Stuffing for Duck

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the apples until half done.
Add bread crumbs, cayenne pepper, salt, and sage to the apples, and mix the ingredients together.
Stuff the mixture into the duck and roast.

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).
Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,790 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,778 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide tartness and moisture, and soften into the stuffing as they cook.
Bread crumbs: Absorb the apple juices and give the stuffing body and a soft texture.