Name: Fowl Dressing
Ingredients: ½ cup stale bread, steamed; 1 onion, finely chopped; 2 apples, finely chopped; 3 raw eggs; salt to taste; pepper to taste; allspice to taste

Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fowl Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Steam the stale bread according to the size of the fowl.
In a bowl, mix the steamed bread with the chopped onion, chopped apples, and raw eggs.
Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and allspice to taste.
Stuff the mixture into the fowl before cooking.

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.

Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + allspicetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,270 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Apple + allspicetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together998 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, egg, pepper, allspice):

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Avocadofits better
Applethe original

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