Name: Fritot of Creme of Lamb
Ingredients: 2 loins of lamb; 1 pint of good stock; 1 pint of water; Bouquet of thyme and parsley; 1 sliced carrot; 1 sliced turnip; Cream (as needed); Peas, macedoine, or mushrooms for garnish

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fritot of Creme of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Fold a bit of paper and place it at the bottom of a stewpan.
Add ½ cup of water and bring to a boil.
Fix a dariole mould on top and cover it; let it simmer gently for a few minutes.
Check the consistency with your finger; it should feel like jelly.
If too firm, add more cream.
For small moulds, the mixture should be more delicate and less firm.
Use the trimmings of the lamb to make the sauce by adding 1 pint of stock, bouquet of thyme and parsley, sliced carrot, and turnip.
Stew slowly for 3 hours, then strain and mix into a white or brown sauce, ensuring it is not too thick or greasy.
Garnish with peas, macedoine, or mushrooms.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,842 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,563 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, thyme, parsley, carrot, turnip, cream):

Lentilsfits better
Chickpeafits better
Beansfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, thyme, parsley, carrot, turnip, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.