Name: Savoury Hash of Australian Meat
Ingredients: 1½ pounds of Australian meat; 2 teaspoons chopped herbs (2/3 parsley, 1/3 marjoram and thyme); pepper; salt; ½ pint melted butter (made from meat jelly dissolved in stock or hot water)

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 ↓

Savoury Hash of Australian Meat

Ingredients

1½ pounds of Australian meat
2 teaspoons chopped herbs (2/3 parsley, 1/3 marjoram and thyme)
pepper
salt
½ pint melted butter (made from meat jelly dissolved in stock or hot water)

Directions

Cut the meat into serving pieces.
Sprinkle each piece with pepper, salt, and mixed herbs.
Combine the meat jelly with stock or hot water to make melted butter.
Thicken the melted butter with a small nut of brown.

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).
Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,979 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, marjoram, thyme, pepper, butter):

Sagefits about as well
Winter savoryfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Rosemaryfits about as well

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