Name: Forcemeat
Ingredients: 1 loaf of bread, crumbs; 3 whole raw eggs; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; 2 teaspoons pepper; 1 tablespoon sage; ½ teaspoon nutmeg; 3 skinned sausages; a pinch of chopped parsley; cooked onions

Why it works: Sage and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

Soak the crumbs of a loaf of bread in water for 15 minutes. Press out all the water using your hands or a cloth.

Make the forcemeat

In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, sage, nutmeg, sausages, parsley, and cooked onions. Mix well and use the forcemeat as needed in other recipes.

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.

Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,445 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together642 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Provide the bulk and body that hold the mixture together.
Eggs: Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when cooked.
Sausages: Add meat, fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Sage: Adds the herbal, aromatic flavour typical of stuffing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, pepper, sage, nutmeg, parsley):

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.