Name: Cooking for Others: New Ingredients, Old Friends
Ingredients: 2 Bosc pears, cored and thinly sliced; 7 oz baby arugula (watercress and mache work well too); ¾ cup pecans; 2 boneless duck breasts (about 1 ½ – 2 lbs); 1 inch ginger, grated or finely minced, about 1 tbsp; 1 garlic clove, pushed through a press or finely minced; ½ tbsp honey; 1 tbsp dark soy sauce; ½ tbsp olive oil; 1 small shallot, quartered; 1 tbsp ginger, chopped; 1 tsp honey; ½ lemon, juiced; 2 tbsp Dijon mustard; 2 tbsp olive oil; ¼ tsp salt; 16oz frozen peas; 1 shallot, chopped; 1 garlic clove, chopped; 1 tsp ginger, chopped; ½ tbsp olive oil

Why it works: Pear and honey work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 171 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

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.

Pear + honeytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together171 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Watercress + garlictop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together263 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,402 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pear + gingertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together452 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Pear + watercresstop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together23 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the arugula

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, watercress, pecans, ginger, garlic, honey, sauce):

Shallotfits better
Welsh onionfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Arugulathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, watercress, pecans, ginger, garlic, honey, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Duck	100g cooked with skin	337
Olive Oil	1 tbsp (14g)	119
Pear	1 medium (178g)	101
Honey	1 tbsp (21g)	64
Pea	1/2 cup (72g)	62
Pecan	1 half (4g)	20
Lemon	juice of 1 lemon (48ml)	12
Soy Sauce	1 tbsp (15ml)	9
Clove	1 tsp ground (2g)	7
Shallot	1 tbsp minced (10g)	7
Arugula	1 cup (20g)	5
Watercress	1 cup (34g)	4
Garlic	1 clove (3g)	4
Mustard	1 tsp (5g) yellow	3
Ginger	1 tsp grated fresh (2g)	2
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

Cooking for Others: New Ingredients, Old Friends