Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Brown Minced Veal
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the stock
Put the bones in a saucepan with water and stew until you have about ½ pint of liquid left.
Season and warm
Chop the meat into small pieces, both fat and lean.
Season the meat with pepper, salt, lemon juice, and lemon peel.
Add mushroom ketchup and warm it up in the same manner as the white sauce.
Garnish with sippets.
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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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,423 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,633 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,225 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Meat
- Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the dish.
- Mushroom ketchup
- Adds savoury depth and umami to the finished dish.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat flavour.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, mushroom, ketchup):
- Lemonthe original
- Limefits about as well
- Red currantfits less well
- Avocadofits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, mushroom, ketchup. 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.
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