Name: Meat Sausages
Ingredients: a pinch of thyme or sweet marjoram; 3 drops of lemon juice; 2 teaspoons of pepper; ¼ cup of pork, chopped; 2 cups of cooked meat, chopped; yolks of 2 eggs, beaten

Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Meat Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the filling

Mix the thyme, lemon juice, and pepper with the chopped pork and meat.
Add the beaten egg yolks and mix thoroughly.

Shape and cook

Form the mixture into small, flat sausage cakes.
Sauté the sausage cakes in a frying pan until cooked.

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.

Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,208 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Thyme + porktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,108 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).