Name: To Stew Giblets
Ingredients: giblets; water; 3 onions; 2 turnips; 1 carrot; a little thyme; a little parsley; butter (about 2 tablespoons); flour (about 1 tablespoon)

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Stew Giblets

Ingredients

Directions

Scald and clean the giblets, cutting the pinions in half and the head, neck, and legs in two.
Wash the giblets thoroughly and place them in a stew-pan, covering with water.
Bring to a boil, skimming off any scum that forms.
Add the onions, turnips, carrot, thyme, and parsley, and stew until tender.
Strain the mixture through a sieve, washing the giblets with warm water to remove herbs.
In a separate stew-pan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour until smooth.

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,563 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, thyme, parsley, butter, flour):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, thyme, parsley, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.