Name: Oyster Stuffing, Savoury
Ingredients: 12 large oysters; ½ cup stock; 4 oz soft white breadcrumbs; a little grated lemon rind; 2 teaspoons chopped parsley; 1 pinch mace; 1½ oz butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oyster Stuffing, Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Remove gills from the oysters and save the liquor.
Combine the liquor, gills, and stock in a pot and bring to a boil.
Simmer until the flavor is extracted from the gills, then strain the mixture.
In a bowl, mix breadcrumbs, grated lemon, chopped parsley, salt, pepper, butter, mace, and chopped oysters.
Bind the mixture with an egg and enough oyster stock to achieve the right consistency.
Use this mixture to stuff fish or poultry.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,268 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, lemon, parsley, butter, pepper):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Tarragonfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, lemon, parsley, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.