Name: A Digestible Mutton Chop
Ingredients: 1 mutton chop; parsley or caper sauce

Why it works: Mutton and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,915 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Digestible Mutton Chop

Ingredients

1 mutton chop
parsley or caper sauce

Directions

Cook the mutton chop on a plate over a saucepan, turning once or twice.
Cook for 20 to 25 minutes.
Cover with parsley or caper sauce before serving.

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.

Mutton + parsleytop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,915 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chop: Provides the main protein, which firms and browns as it cooks through.
Parsley or caper sauce: Adds moisture and a sharp, herbal flavour to the rich meat.

“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.