Name: Stuffed Breast of Veal
Ingredients: 1 breast of veal; 1 cup bread crumbs; ¼ pound fat salt pork (or butter); 1 teaspoon sweet marjoram; 1 teaspoon thyme; 1 teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper

Why it works: Marjoram and thyme 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 ↓

Stuffed Breast of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make an incision between the ribs and the meat to form a cavity for the stuffing.
If needed, ask your butcher to prepare the veal for stuffing.
Chop the fat salt pork very fine; it should yield about 1 tablespoon when chopped.
In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, chopped pork (or butter), marjoram, thyme, salt, and pepper.
Stuff the mixture into the cavity of the veal.
Roast the veal as directed in your preferred method.

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.

Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,225 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).
Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,930 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Pork + thymetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,108 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, pork, marjoram, pepper):

Sagefits about as well
Thymethe original
Parsleyfits less well
Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, pork, marjoram, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.