Name: Lamb Chops with Potatoes
Ingredients: Lamb chops; Egg; Bread crumbs; Chopped parsley; Potatoes; Butter or cream; Lemon slices; Pickled mushrooms

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb Chops with Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cut handsome chops from the neck and trim the bone.
Season the chops, brush them with egg, and dip them in a mixture of bread crumbs and parsley.
Fry the chops until they are a pale yellow.
Mash the potatoes with butter or cream until smooth.
Place the mashed potatoes high in the center of a dish and score it.
Arrange the fried chops around the potatoes, leaning each one against the next.
Garnish with lemon slices and pickled 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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together520 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).