Name: Stuffing with Ham
Ingredients: ½ cup finely minced cooked ham; bread crumbs; 1 beaten egg; very thin strips of uncooked ham or bacon

Why it works: Ham and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Stuffing with Ham

Ingredients

½ cup finely minced cooked ham
bread crumbs
1 beaten egg
very thin strips of uncooked ham or bacon

Directions

Substitute ½ cup of finely minced cooked ham for the same amount of bread crumbs in your bread stuffing recipe.
Leave out the celery and parsley.
Add the beaten egg to the mixture.
Stuff the chicken with the ham stuffing.
Bind very thin strips of uncooked ham or bacon over the chicken's breast.
Baste the wings and drumsticks frequently with the drippings from the pork.

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.

Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).