Name: Bacon or Hams
Ingredients: macaroni; slightly salted boiling water; bacon; butter; nutmeg; salt; pepper

Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bacon or Hams

Ingredients

Directions

Break the macaroni into small pieces.
Boil the macaroni in slightly salted water for 5 minutes, then drain well.
Boil stock in a stewpan, add the macaroni, and stew until tender.
Cut the bacon into small dice and fry slightly in a sauté pan.
Add the drained macaroni, butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to the bacon.
Stir gently over the heat until the macaroni is nicely browned.
Serve on a hot dish.

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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).