Name: Veal Stew
Ingredients: a few cloves; 1 blade of mace; 2 or 3 onions; white pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; a little allspice; juice of 1 lemon; ⅓ cup white wine

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Veal Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the cloves and onions.
In a pot, combine the cloves, mace, onions, white pepper, salt, and allspice.
Simmer slowly, keeping the pot covered.
Once done, remove the meat and skim off the fat.
Strain and thicken the gravy, then add lemon juice and white wine.
Pour the hot gravy over the veal, discarding any sediment.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,083 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,695 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, mace, onion, allspice, lemon, white wine):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Nutmegfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, mace, onion, allspice, lemon, white wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.