Why it works: Mutton and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓
Mock Duck
Ingredients
Directions
Remove all bones from the mutton shoulder, except for the shoulder bone.
Turn the neck in and roll the shoulder back to shape it.
Insert the socket part of the shoulder blade into a slit at the opposite end to form a tail.
Attach a lettuce leaf to each side to create the illusion of wings.
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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Mutton + lettucetop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together242 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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