Name: Sweet Stuffing
Ingredients: 1 pound apples, pared and cored; ½ pound minced onions; 1 ounce minced sage; 1 clove garlic, minced; juice of 1 Seville orange; ¼ cup sugar; ¼ teaspoon allspice; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); ¼ pound butter

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Mix apples, onions, sage, garlic, orange juice, sugar, allspice, and salt in a bowl.
Incorporate the butter until well combined.
Stuff the mixture into the body of the goose.
Tie the neck and rump securely to prevent butter from leaking out.
For best results, prepare the stuffing the night before.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Sage + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together331 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Orange + allspicetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together727 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Sage + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together731 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 (apple, sage, clove, garlic, orange, sugar, allspice):

Carrotfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sage, clove, garlic, orange, sugar, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.