Name: Stuffing for Boiled Fowl
Ingredients: 2 cups spaghetti, broken into 1-inch pieces; 2 quarts boiling water; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Black pepper, to taste; 2 tablespoons butter; ½ teaspoon finely chopped parsley; 1 small onion, finely chopped

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffing for Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

2 cups spaghetti, broken into 1-inch pieces
2 quarts boiling water
Coarse sea salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon finely chopped parsley
1 small onion, finely chopped

Directions

Make the stuffing

Cook the spaghetti in boiling salted water until tender, then drain and blanch.
Season the spaghetti with salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and onion.

Finish

Fill the fowl with the mixture and truss neatly as for roasting.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spaghetti: Forms the bulk of the stuffing and soaks up the butter and seasoning.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta and carrying flavour.
Onion: Adds savoury aroma and a mild sharpness to the stuffing.