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Gratin of Roasted Mediterranean Vegetables with Mature Cheddar

Served hot or cold, this all-in-one dish tastes as good as it looks. I prefer the vegetables cut into chunky pieces – that way you can taste all the individual ingredients.

By bbcfood · From Open Recipes · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,164 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 8
Prep30 min
Cook1 hr

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Tomato + basiltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Fennel + basiltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-anethole (anise).

  5. Onion + potatotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the fennel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, olive, garlic, potato, tomato, basil):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Oreganobetter flavor fit
  3. Rosemarybetter flavor fit
  4. Fennelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, olive, garlic, potato, tomato, basil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).