Name: Receipt for Pounding Ham
Ingredients: ham; butter; mace; nutmeg; cayenne pepper; white pepper; cloves (optional)

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Receipt for Pounding Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Pound the ham until it is broken into small pieces.
If the ham is not very dry, pound it before adding butter.
Add butter and continue to pound until well blended.
Season with mace, nutmeg, and cayenne or white pepper.
For brown meats, add a small quantity of cloves if desired.
Ensure the ham is fresh and place it in a cool area immediately after preparation.

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.

Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, mace, nutmeg, pepper, white pepper):

Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, mace, nutmeg, pepper, white pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.