Name: Vegetable Goose
Ingredients: 1 lb bread, soaked in cold water; 1 onion, chopped; 1 teaspoon chopped sage; 2 oz chopped walnuts; 1 oz butter; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Vegetable Goose

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Squeeze the bread nearly dry and mash it.
Mix in the onion, sage, walnuts, butter, pepper, and salt.

Bake and serve

Grease a Yorkshire pudding dish and add the mixture.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 30 minutes.
Serve hot, cut into squares.

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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sage + walnuttop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together179 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,628 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the other ingredients as it bakes.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, keeping the mixture moist and tender as it cooks.
Walnuts: Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft bread.
Onion: Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens during baking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sage, walnut, butter, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sage, walnut, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.