Name: Stuffing: for Poultry
Ingredients: 1 pint bread crumbs; 1 teaspoon pepper; 1 small teaspoon salt; 1 ounce thyme; a little chopped parsley; 1 egg; 1 cup boiling water; butter (size of an egg)

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stuffing: for Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in boiling water.
Mix in the bread crumbs, pepper, salt, thyme, parsley, and egg until well combined.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Form the bulk of the stuffing and soak up the buttery liquid to give body.
Egg: Binds the crumbs together so the stuffing holds its shape when set.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and keeps the stuffing moist.

Swap the thyme

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

Thymethe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.