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Three Flavour Focaccia

This focaccia is not fussy. It's the kind of thing you can get excited about making on a Saturday afternoon. I often throw the ingredients in a food processor, whiz it up then leave it overnight. This bread, along with some lovely salad and cold leftover chicken, would also make a great dinner.

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Why it works: Flour and semolina match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 310 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 10

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By jamieoliver. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Flour + semolinatop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together310 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Olive + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,641 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  3. Bread + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together999 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Olive + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Onion + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, semolina, sugar, olive, onion, vinegar):

  1. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Turmericabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, semolina, sugar, olive, onion, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).