Name: Boiled Calf's Feet and Parsley and Butter
Ingredients: 2 slices of bacon; 2 tablespoonfuls of lemon-juice; a bunch of savoury herbs; 2 calf's feet; 1 onion; 4 cloves; 1 blade of mace; 2 white calf's feet; 4 persons; salt; pepper; cloves; mace; parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,768 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's feet: Provide gelatine, which sets the liquor and gives the dish its body and richness.
Bacon: Adds savoury, salty fat that flavours the cooking liquor as it stews.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the stewed meat.
Onion: Contributes aromatic sweetness and depth to the cooking liquor.

The step that matters

Keep the stew gently simmering. A gentle stew for about 3 hours lets collagen in the feet slowly break down into gelatine without toughening or clouding the liquor. Boiling hard can make the meat ragged and the liquor cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, onion, clove, pepper, parsley):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Allspicefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, onion, clove, pepper, parsley. 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.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Onion	1 medium (110g)	44
Bacon	1 slice cooked (8g)	43
Clove	1 tsp ground (2g)	7
Black Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Parsley	1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)	1
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0
Mace	not in our table	0

Boiled Calf's Feet and Parsley and Butter