Name: Hashed Meat.
Ingredients: 1 pound scraps of cold meat; 2 small onions; ½ turnip; 1 bunch of herbs (parsley, thyme, marjoram, and 1 bay leaf); 1 tablespoon flour; 2 teaspoons mushroom catsup; sippets of bread; salt and pepper to taste; ½ ounce butter

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Hashed Meat.

Ingredients

Directions

Remove all meat from the bone and slice it thinly.
Chop the bone into pieces and place in a saucepan.
Peel and quarter one onion.
Wash and scrape the turnip, then cut it in half.
Wash a bunch of parsley and dry it.
Tie the herbs together with string to form a bouquet garni.
Add the herbs and vegetables to the saucepan with the bones and cover with cold water.
Bring to a boil, then season with salt and pepper to taste.
Cover and reduce heat to simmer for 1 to 1.5 hours, skimming occasionally.
In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Add the sliced onion and fry until golden brown.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,225 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).
Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,979 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Turnip + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together367 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, parsley, thyme, marjoram, flour, mushroom):

Shallotfits better
Leekfits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, turnip, parsley, thyme, marjoram, flour, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.