Name: Forcemeat for Hare
Ingredients: 4 oz small mushrooms, peeled and trimmed; 2 oz 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

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

Finely mince the mushrooms and mix with breadcrumbs and butter.
Add salt, cayenne, mace, nutmeg, lemon rind, and egg yolks.
Beat the mixture well in a large bowl.
Form into small balls and poach for 5 to 6 minutes or fry for 6 to 8 minutes.
Use the forcemeat to fill boiled fowls, partridges, or turkeys.

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).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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):

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Macethe original

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