Name: Roast Goose
Ingredients: 1 quart mashed potatoes; 1 small onion, chopped; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Apple sauce, for serving; Chopped giblets, previously stewed until tender; Water from stewing giblets; Butter, for thickening; Flour, for thickening

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Roast Goose

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the chopped onion into the mashed potatoes and season with salt and pepper.
Stuff the goose with the potato mixture and roast until well done, basting frequently.
Once done, remove the goose from the pan and pour off the fat.
Add the chopped giblets and the water they were boiled in to the remaining brown gravy.
Thicken the gravy with butter and flour rubbed together, bring to a boil, and serve.

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.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, pepper, sauce, butter, flour):

Avocadofits better
Limefits better
Mangofits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, pepper, sauce, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.