Name: Kitchen Pepper
Ingredients: 1 ounce ground ginger; ½ ounce black pepper; ½ ounce ground cinnamon; ½ ounce ground nutmeg; ½ ounce ground allspice; 1 teaspoon ground cloves; 6 ounces coarse sea salt

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Kitchen Pepper

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the ground ginger, black pepper, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, ground allspice, ground cloves, and coarse sea salt together.
Store the mixture in a tightly corked bottle.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground ginger: Adds warm, sharp, spicy flavor and aroma to the blend.
Black pepper: Adds sharp heat and aroma that gives the blend its bite.
Ground cinnamon: Adds sweet, woody aroma and warmth.
Ground nutmeg: Adds warm, nutty aroma.
Ground allspice: Adds a warm aroma with notes of cinnamon and clove.
Ground cloves: Adds a strong, pungent aroma, used here in small amounts.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove):

Cardamomfits better
Marjoramfits about as well
Winter savoryfits about as well
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove. 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.