Name: Plain Timbale of Macaroni
Ingredients: ¼ pound Naples macaroni; coarse sea salt; 2 ounces tender cold meat (veal, chicken, rabbit, or game); ½ pint milk; 1 tablespoon flour; nutmeg; 1 ounce butter; 1 egg yolk; chopped parsley

Why it works: Nutmeg and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Plain Timbale of Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the macaroni in salted water for 30 minutes.
Drain and let it cool.
Butter a half-pint mold and line it with the macaroni.
Mince the cold meat finely.
Boil the onion in milk until reduced to ½ cup.
Mix flour with a little cold milk and stir into the onion milk, thickening over heat.
Add nutmeg and chopped parsley to the sauce.
Remove from heat, stir in butter and egg yolk.
Pour the sauce over the meat in the mold.
Cover with remaining macaroni and steam for 20 minutes.

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.

Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, milk, flour, nutmeg, butter, egg):

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Capersfits about as well

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