Name: To Make It Taste Like Venison
Ingredients: 1 haunch of meat; olive oil; whole pepper; 4 cloves of garlic; a bundle of sweet herbs (parsley, thyme, sweet marjoram); 2 bay leaves; 1 pint of vinegar; 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil; slices of raw onion

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

To Make It Taste Like Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Let the haunch hang for the usual time.
Carefully remove the skin and rub the meat with olive oil.
Place the meat in a pan with whole pepper, garlic, sweet herbs, and bay leaves.
Pour vinegar and olive oil over the meat.
Cover the meat with slices of raw onion and turn it daily, keeping the onion on top.
After 4 days, wipe the meat with a napkin and hang it in a cool place until the next day for roasting.

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.

Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,225 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).
Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,979 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,075 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, olive, pepper, garlic, parsley, thyme, marjoram):

Rosemaryfits better
Basilfits better
Oreganofits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, olive, pepper, garlic, parsley, thyme, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.