Name: Forcemeat
Ingredients: 4 ounces fine bread crumbs; 1½ ounces good butter; 1 yolk of egg; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ⅓ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ⅓ teaspoon mace; ⅓ teaspoon nutmeg; 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Mince the cold mushrooms and mix with bread crumbs and butter.
If too moist, add the yolk of one egg to bind the mixture.
Stir in salt, cayenne, mace, nutmeg, and lemon rind sparingly to preserve mushroom flavor.
Mix thoroughly and form into small balls.
Poach the balls in water for 1 to 6 minutes or fry for 6 to 8 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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 (bread, butter, egg, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

Parsleyfits better
Marjoramfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Macethe original

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