Name: Veal Forcemeat
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons freshly-made breadcrumbs; 2 tablespoons finely-chopped suet; 1 tablespoon finely-chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon dried thyme; ¼ teaspoon grated lemon rind; 1 egg; a little milk; a good pinch of nutmeg; salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Veal Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
Add the egg and enough milk to moisten the mixture thoroughly.
Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste.
Shape the mixture as desired.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, lemon, egg, milk, pepper):

Marjoramfits better
Dillfits better
Tarragonfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, lemon, egg, milk, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.