There are the classics, of course, like cucumbers and dill or pumpkin and sage. Also nutmeg in béchamel.

I tend to follow whims and try new combinations. A favorite is chopped broccolini and onions, sautéed with EVOO and balsamic, with red pepper flakes. Good out of the pot but great on pizza. I've been using a lot of fenugreek recently, in all kinds of different ways, but not one specific.

Old favorites: Lemon and tarragon go together beautifully whether in brunch salads (egg or tuna) or in ricotta filling for lasagna or other pasta. Dried powdered ginger and mustard, with pepper and herbs in a vinaigrette.

If you don't own "The Flavor Bible", buy it now. Today. Immediately.

It is absolutely wonderful for this kind of playing with flavors. Probably the "cookbook" I pull out more often than all the others combined.

Worth its money many times over!
(The Look Inside feature on Amazon shows pages in the Kindle edition, which, according to reviewers, is FAR inferior in organization to the original.)

One of my first discoveries: cinnamon in chicken salad.
Today I looked up lamb and read that cloves add something subtly wonderful to lamb. Never tried that before. And won't today, because I must have used the last of my cloves and forgot to replenish. Drat.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Flavor Bible

Annie, you have almost polar opposite taste from me, and so I doubt you would like my suggestions. This may be partly because we grew up in different regions. I hate nutmeg on greens and equally hate tarragon, although I used to grow it, thinking it would like it on something. It's too bad, because it was extremely easy to grow, but equally easy to get rid of. However, my sister also has polar opposite taste from mine, and hers would probably be more similar to yours.

I make my own smoked/grilled Habanero sauce, and that goes into a lot of dishes. I cut down on the heat by grilling red bell peppers with the Habs, and I also grill elephant garlic to go with it. I preserve the sauce with white Balsamic vinegar and Kosher salt. I mix small amounts of this with mayonnaise to use on my sandwiches, as I find plain mayo too bland.

I also like chimichurri sauce and keep that on hand as well - it is a good way of preserving cilantro, but I also freeze cilantro when I have huge quantities in my yard, which usually occurs only in late winter, as that is the best time for me to grow it.

I also love dill (hard for me to grow - it's another winter herb for me), and I make a paste with garlic, Kosher salt, fresh black pepper, dill, and lemon juice that I use frequently - it makes a nice dip or salad dressing when mixed with mayonnaise and/or sour cream or creme fraiche. I make garlic butter with butter, olive oil, garlic, and pepper (red or black) and add fresh oregano, basil, and/or thyme, depending on what I have. Those three herbs are very common in Cajun cooking, which is what I grew up with, along with Tex-Mex. I make a Cajun seasoning mix of those herbs in dried form plus garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne, and salt. I use this mix even on popcorn.

I have several African spice mixes that I like, and I frequently use Sumac on chicken. I also use a lot of ginger in cooking and have a collection of both Japanese and Indian spices. I have lemongrass in a tube and use that with Kaffir limes that I grow when making Thai soup, to which I also add tamarind paste. I was growing a tamarind tree for a while from a seed that I found in a block of paste, but got rid of it when I found out how large it was going to get. I have lemongrass in my yard, but I find the tube more convenient to use and has a good flavor. I keep a lot of wasabi on hand as well.

Lars

Lars, I don't care for nutmeg on greens or in my rutabaga either, although I do love rutabaga. I want both of those things with salt and pepper, a bit of butter and that's all. I like the flavor of the vegetable itself, and don't require additional seasoning.

I do love chives in eggs and tarragon in a lot of things, but I'm not crazy about dill in anything.

It's that old "taste is subjective, not objective" thing, of course.

I tend to use a lot of freshly ground black pepper, fresh thyme and oregano from my herb garden, and sweet potatoes and chipotle just seem to go together for me.

Annie

How interesting. And I love those flavors. And I tend to shy away from hot spicy. To each his/her own. But I appreciate the suggestions and will have to try to get out of my comfort zone and give those a shot. I admit I never thought of sweet potatoes and chipotle!

I also have a jar of Chinese 5 spice which I love...I made a chicken dish with it and it was good...but haven't really figured out how to use it. I'm open to suggestions.

I really like coriander and dry ginger on poultry and pork. We buy these spices by the pound.

mushrooms and sausage + marjoram

chicken + thyme or poultry seasoning

Tex-Mex and Middle Eastern dishes + cumin

roasted sweet potatoes + chili powder

applesauce + cinnamon

stir-fry meat marinades + Chinese 5-spice

Hmmm, it's easier for me to list what I DON'T use:

Rosemary: I love it, but friends/family don't. I still use it - I grow fresh rosemary outside the front door - but in reduced quantities. For example, I add a few sprigs of rosemary to the baking pan when I'm roasting a chicken, so it's toasting underneath the rack. But I don't use any rosemary on the chicken itself.

Cinnamon: Whether Vietnamese cassia or true Ceylon cinnamon, DH and I aren't overly fond of it. We're okay with some, but not much. Much prefer allspice, nutmeg, and cardamon.

DH is Chinese-Portuguese but loathes 5-spice, LOL. So no star anise, either.

Dry mustard: Never have much use for it. Nor for horseradish, Maggi, or Worcestershire.

Any lemon 'sub', such as lemongrass, sumac, etc. We have 3 Meyers in our garden and I have so many I'm always giving them away. My freezer is always well-stocked with Meyer juice.

Favorite combinations are:
Thyme: roast beef. Never on burgers or steaks; too strong. Needs to be a big hunk of prime rib to stand up to it. DH loves prime rib; we eat it regularly.

Tarragon: in almost anything. Chicken, fish, butter or cream sauces.

Garlic: also in almost anything. Love to use fresh and mashed poached garlic together. Poached garlic, cooked in EVOO until soft, is so much easier than roasted garlic to produce in quantity. I freeze it and use it all the time.

Marjoram: Love this in combination with basil. Both are sweet but different and combine beautifully together for more depth. Wonderful with chicken or in sauces.

Agrodulce pimenton: We use La Chinata although Chiliquin is also very good. 'Agrodulce' is the bittersweet. Great in BBQ rubs, stews, and even cream sauces.

Cumin: I love it, DH doesn't. I sneak it in anyway! Anything Mexican/Latin American. Goes great with lamb, Chinese style, either stir-fried or grilled.

Chiles: We have powdered, flake, liquid, and sauce jars of various kinds. I keep chipotles in their sauce in small pkgs in the freezer. We have a dozen different kinds of bottled hot sauce. Also four types of Asian chile sauces, from sriracha to Guilin.

Soy/Fish sauces: We're Asian, so we have eight different types of soya, and use them all.

A prior poster once commented that sweet potatoes "can always dance" with chipotle. I tried it then and loved it, but it has to be just a little bit of chipotle, I'm such a heat wimp.

Elery loves sweet potatoes mashed with a bit of the adobo sauce that comes on canned chipotles, an idea I got from Alton Brown.

I've also made Bobby Flay's twice baked sweet potatoes, but with a stick of butter, a cup and a half of heavy cream, some crème fraiche and half a cup of real maple syrup, well, that tablespoon of chipotle seems kind of secondary, LOL.

(Old Other) Annie