“How do you know what ingredients and seasonings go well together?”
While the answer to this question is not trivial and for most, will have to come with experience and personal preference, there is no reason we can not try to reason this out quantitatively. I have scraped the internet to find the most popular ingredients with each meat.
The Dataset
I have scraped over 17,000 recipes using Python and have gathered their respective ingredients in order to get to the bottom of this. For the sake of this article, I will look at the four major meat groups: chicken, pork, beef, and fish.
While this dataset will not represent the entire population of all the recipes, it will hopefully provide a basic idea of what the most popular ingredients are with each meat.
Top Ingredients For Each Meat
The top 5 ingredients for each meat have been removed as they were the same: salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and butter. While these are stable (and fantastic) ingredients used in almost every recipe, the purpose of this article was to help fellow culinary amateurs experiment and explore other flavors! As such, they have been removed from the top 10 list among some other items (such as eggs, flour, and oils).
Below are the top 10 ingredients used with each meat.
| Top | Chicken | Beef | Pork | Fish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | chicken broth | worcestershire sauce | brown sugar | parsley |
| 2 | soy sauce | soy sauce | soy sauce | lemon juice |
| 3 | paprika | sugar | cayenne pepper | lemon |
| 4 | cayenne pepper | brown sugar | cumin | cayenne pepper |
| 5 | cumin | ketchup | worcestershire sauce | mayonnaise |
| 6 | oregano | oregano | chili powder | paprika |
| 7 | parsley | carrots | ketchup | green onions |
| 8 | lemon juice | chili powder | oregano | red pepper |
| 9 | green onions | beef broth | sugar | tomatoes |
| 10 | parmesan cheese | parsley | kosher salt | milk |
Several of the ingredients in a single column can go well together. For example, all the ingredients in the pork column would make a good barbeque sauce (might have to play around with the ratios to your own preference, but it would provide a good start. It is always important to experiment and learn what works well with each other!
Word Cloud
Sometimes the top 10 ingredients do not give a big enough picture; plus…what if you do not have the ingredient in your kitchen at the time? Below are word clouds (and common seasonings; minus salt and pepper) of commonly used ingredients with each type of meat (denoted by the outline of the chart!). For the sake of being comprehensive, all ingredients were included. This will give a true idea of the most popular ingredients for each meat group.
Note: Since collocations were included, single words (such as ‘salt’ or ‘pepper’) may appear twice. I also tried my best to remove words that may signify a part of the animal (such as ‘breast’ or ‘wing’ in chicken), but alas, these words are plentiful and come in a variety of variations. I am hoping that the main takeaway from this article will help those who are new to cooking and will give a good basic idea of common seasonings and ingredients used with each meat!
Popular ingredients with Chicken
What can I say about chickens…They are an egg-ceptional source of protein. While the figure below demonstrates seasonings for chickens, most of these will work with any white meat bird (like turkeys)!
Below are the seasonings that are at the top of the ‘pecking’ order:
- Garlic powder
- Cayenne pepper
- Parsley
- Chili powder
- Onion powder
- Ginger
- Thyme
- Oregano
- Cumin
- Rosemary
Popular ingredients with Beef
There are so many different cuts to a cow, it can definitely become udderly overwhelming. I will write a more in-depth article about the different parts of each animal and the ‘intended’ (or most common) method to cook each one, but for now….word cloud!
Moo-re top 10 ingredients for beef:
- Garlic powder
- Brown sugar
- Chili powder
- parsley
- cayenne pepper
- onion powder
- oregano
- rosemary
- thyme
- paprika
Popular ingredients with Pork
You have pigged the right place for finding popular ingredients in pork recipes! I will keep this short and present to you the word cloud below:
Top 10 ingredients that will make you squeal with joy:
- brown sugar
- garlic powder
- cayenne pepper
- chili powder
- onion powder
- parsley
- oregano
- thyme
- paprika
Fish
I would say fish is a tricker one to generalize as fish ‘cod’ taste different depending on the breed. This is not to say that the breed of chicken, cow, or pig will not vary based on the breed and cute of meat; however, fish is definitely one that has a wider range of texture, oiliness and taste. Tuna in for the word cloud below!
Although the ingredients below won’t work with all fish…Carp-e diem!
- parsley
- cayenne pepper
- garlic powder
- paprika
- bay leaf
- seafood seasoning
- cilantro
- basil
- dill weed
- thyme