Name: Baked Stuffed Musk Melon
Ingredients: 1 Musk melon; 2 onions; sufficient mutton to fill the melon

Why it works: Musk melon and melon work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Baked Stuffed Musk Melon

Ingredients

1 Musk melon
2 onions
sufficient mutton to fill the melon

Directions

Cut the stalk off the melon, leaving a 2-inch opening for a lid.
Scoop out all the seeds and some of the inside flesh.
Finely mince the onions and mutton.
Stuff the minced mixture into the melon.
Replace the stalk as a lid.

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.

Musk melon + melontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Onion + muttontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,531 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + melontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together187 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Musk melon + oniontop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mutton + melontop 40% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).