Name: Common Veal Stuffing
Ingredients: equal quantities of finely shredded suet; equal quantities of grated bread crumbs; chopped sweet herbs; grated lemon peel; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Common Veal Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Combine equal amounts of finely shredded suet and grated bread crumbs in a bowl.
Add chopped sweet herbs, grated lemon peel, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Pound the mixture in a mortar until well combined.
For white poultry, add a little grated smoked beef or pounded root of tongue to the mixture.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,445 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).