Name: Chicken or Veal Forcemeat
Ingredients: 2 oz chopped suet or 2 oz melted butter; Grated rind of 1 lemon; 1 egg; 1 oz chopped ham; Salt and pepper to taste; 4 oz breadcrumbs; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; ½ teaspoon dried thyme; 2 to 3 tablespoons milk

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Chicken or Veal Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix the breadcrumbs, chopped ham, parsley, thyme, salt, and pepper.
Add the grated lemon rind and suet or melted butter.
Beat the egg and add it to the mixture.
Pour in enough milk to make the mixture moist, then combine well.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Swap the thyme

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

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

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