Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Ham Pasty, Meat or Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Make a good rich stock.
Season it well with mace, coarse sea salt, pepper, and sugar.
Thicken the stock with animal jelly or isinglass.
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.
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Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,257 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,401 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Mace + sugartop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,096 recipes
Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Cardamomfits better
- Allspicefits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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