Name: Ducks Aux Truffes, or with Truffles
Ingredients: 2 fine ducks; truffles; chopped parsley; thyme; mushrooms; bacon

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Ducks Aux Truffes, or with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Singe and truss the ducks neatly.
Stew the truffles with chopped parsley, thyme, and mushrooms.
Put a few truffles inside each duck.
Wrap the ducks with strips of bacon.
Roast the ducks at 400°F (200°C) like a fowl with truffles and the same sauce.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,900 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,557 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,132 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Truffle + thymetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together465 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).