Name: Cooke’s Forcemeat for Ducks or Geese
Ingredients: 3 large onions; 1½ cups bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons minced sage; 1 ounce butter; 1 teaspoon pepper; 2 teaspoons coarse sea salt; 1 or 2 egg yolks (optional); part of the liver (optional)

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cooke’s Forcemeat for Ducks or Geese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

Boil the onions for 10 to 15 minutes, then chop them finely.
Mix the chopped onions with bread crumbs, sage, butter, pepper, and salt.
If desired, add shredded liver and bind the mixture with egg yolks.

Stuff the bird

Stuff the mixture into the body of the goose or duck.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 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).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Sage + livertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together229 recipes

Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).
Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,628 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body so it holds its shape.
Onions: Add moisture and sweetness that keep the stuffing soft and savoury.
Butter: Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and carries flavour.
Egg yolks: Bind the mixture together so it holds when stuffed into the bird.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Chivefits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, butter, pepper, egg, liver. 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.