Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Bread Stuffing
Ingredients
Directions
Heat drippings or trimmings from salt pork in a pot.
Brown the outside of the meat with the sliced onions and carrot.
Half cover with boiling water and let simmer until tender.
Garnish with boiled onions, seasoned, basted with butter, and browned in a hot oven.
Skim the fat from the cooking liquid, thicken with flour and water, and strain.
Add white stock and tomato pulp, then simmer the fowl until tender, adding more stock if needed.
Arrange the meat joints in a circle on a serving dish.
Add tarragon vinegar and seasonings to the sauce, then reheat with the cooked macaroni.
Fill the center of the circle with the macaroni mixture.
Garnish with celery leaves or parsley.
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.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Tarragon + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together456 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Carrot + tarragontop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together463 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together21,601 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,518 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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 (pork, carrot, butter, tarragon, vinegar, celery):
- Mustardfits better
- Lettucefits better
- Turnipfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, butter, tarragon, vinegar, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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