Name: Salted Meats
Ingredients: brawn (or purchased brawn); rich glaze or strong aspic jelly (colored brown); boiled egg whites; truffle or pickled walnut skin; Brazil nuts; parsley; lemons; beetroot; lard

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salted Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brawn and let it cool until set in shape.
Coat the brawn with rich glaze or strong aspic jelly.
Cut oval pieces from boiled egg whites to create eyes, making a hole in the center for aspic.
Fill the hole with aspic and place a piece of truffle or pickled walnut skin inside.
Position the eyes on each side of the brawn.
Crack Brazil nuts, boil them, remove the brown skin, and insert them upright near the mouth for tusks.
Decorate with aspic jelly blocks, chopped jelly, and a folded napkin at the back.
Use parsley, lemons, and decorative shapes from truffles and beetroot for garnish.
Pipe lard in various colors to create flowers or leaves around the head.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Brazil nut + beetroottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together745 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Brazil nut + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together18 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + beetroottop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together574 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the brazil nut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, truffle, parsley, lemon, beetroot):

Pistachiofits better
Chickpeafits better
Lentilsfits better
Brazil nutthe original

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