Name: Collared and Potted Meats
Ingredients: salt; powdered allspice; cayenne pepper; sweet butter; clarified butter; moist bladder

Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Collared and Potted Meats

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Sprinkle the birds with salt, allspice, and cayenne pepper.
Place them in a jar and cover with sweet butter.
Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool.
Cut the birds into serving pieces and pack them tightly into a jar.
Fill the jar with clarified butter and cover with moist bladder.

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.

Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Allspice + buttertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,325 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).