Name: Tamale Stuffing
Ingredients: 4 pounds cooked and chopped chicken, pork, or beef; 1 quart chile sauce; 1 small onion, chopped; 1 clove garlic, chopped; 1 pint stoned olives (optional); 1 pound seedless raisins (optional)

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tamale Stuffing

Ingredients

4 pounds cooked and chopped chicken, pork, or beef
1 quart chile sauce
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 pint stoned olives (optional)
1 pound seedless raisins (optional)

Directions

In a large pot, combine the cooked and chopped meat with the chile sauce, chopped onion, and garlic.
Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.
If desired, stir in the stoned olives and seedless raisins.

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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,665 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,850 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).
Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken, pork, or beef: Provides the main body and savory bulk of the filling.
Chile sauce: Supplies the main flavor, moisture, and color of the filling.
Onion: Adds aroma and gentle sweetness as it cooks down.
Garlic: Adds pungent aroma that mellows during cooking.
Seedless raisins: Adds sweetness and a soft, chewy texture to the filling.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, sauce, onion, clove, garlic, olive):

Avocadofits better
Limefits better
Coconutfits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, sauce, onion, clove, garlic, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.