Name: Eggs, Macaroni, and Rice
Ingredients: 2 ounces butter; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; a pinch of nutmeg; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 4 ounces grated pineapple or Gruyère cheese; ⅓ cup white wine; 8 to 10 eggs

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eggs, Macaroni, and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Fry the chopped parsley in the melted butter.
Add nutmeg, salt, and pepper.
Stir in the grated cheese and white wine until the cheese melts.
Add the eggs one at a time, stirring continuously until fully mixed and cooked.
Serve immediately.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pineapple + white winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together45 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, white wine, egg):

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Plumfits better
Pineapplethe original

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