Name: Geese, with Their Sage and Onions
Ingredients: 1 lemon; sage; onions

Why it works: Lemon and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Geese, with Their Sage and Onions

Ingredients

1 lemon
sage
onions

Directions

Pare the yellow rind from the lemon without bruising the fruit or cutting too deeply.
Place the lemon in the center of the seasoning inside the bird.
When serving, gently open the flap and remove the lemon with a tablespoon.
Discard the lemon immediately to avoid breaking it, as the pith will have absorbed unwanted particles.

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.

Lemon + sagetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,628 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + oniontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,646 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).