Name: For Roast Rabbit
Ingredients: mashed potatoes; force-meat balls; watercress; slices of lemon

Why it works: Watercress and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

For Roast Rabbit

Ingredients

mashed potatoes
force-meat balls
watercress
slices of lemon

Directions

Prepare a border of mashed potatoes around the plate.
Arrange force-meat balls on the plate.
Garnish with watercress and slices of lemon.

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.

Watercress + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + watercresstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + watercresstop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together70 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).