Name: Forcemeat for Hare
Ingredients: 4 oz small mushrooms, peeled and trimmed; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ⅓ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ⅓ teaspoon mace; ⅓ teaspoon nutmeg; 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind; 1 or 2 egg yolks; 4 oz bread crumbs

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Forcemeat for Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Mince the mushrooms and mix with bread crumbs and butter.
Add salt, cayenne, mace, nutmeg, and lemon rind.
Incorporate the egg yolks and mix thoroughly.
Form the mixture into small balls.
Poach the balls for 5 to 6 minutes or fry for 6 to 8 minutes.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Swap the mace

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

Parsleyfits better
Marjoramfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

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