Name: Cold Boiled Sucking Pig
Ingredients: 1 sucking pig; white wine; pounded ice; poached egg whites; gherkins; beetroot; aspic jelly; whole capers; horseradish sauce

Why it works: Beetroot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 209 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Boiled Sucking Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Divide the pig into pieces and boil it in white wine.
Let the pig cool and bone it.
Encrust a mold with pounded ice and line it with poached egg whites, gherkins, and beetroot.
Dip each item in aspic jelly before placing it in the mold.
Pour a thick layer of jelly at the bottom of the mold and let it set.
Arrange the pieces of boiled pig alternated with minced gherkins and whole capers, leaving a hollow around the mold.
Fill the hollow with cold liquid jelly and let it set.
To serve, dip the mold in warm water, turn the pig out onto a dish, and serve with horseradish sauce.

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.

Beetroot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beetroot + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together231 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together82 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + saucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Horseradish + saucetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together775 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, egg, capers, horseradish, sauce):

Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Chivefits about as well
Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, egg, capers, horseradish, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.