Name: Oyster Dressing for Boiled Poultry
Ingredients: 25 oysters; 1 tablespoon sweet marjoram; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ cup butter; Pepper to taste; 1 quart stale bread crumbs

Why it works: Marjoram and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Oyster Dressing for Boiled Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Drain the oysters and ensure no shell or grit remains.
Melt the butter in a pan.
Mix all ingredients together thoroughly.
Use the dressing to stuff a large turkey or 2 good-sized chickens.
Serve with oyster 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.

Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,979 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, parsley, butter, pepper, bread):

Thymefits about as well
Marjoramthe original
Sagefits about as well
Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, parsley, butter, pepper, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.