Name: Boiled Tripe
Ingredients: tripe; peeled onions; pepper; coarse sea salt; sprig of thyme; skimmed milk or milk and water; mustard; well-boiled potatoes

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Tripe

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the tripe into square pieces.
Place the tripe in a saucepan with peeled onions, pepper, coarse sea salt, thyme, and enough skimmed milk or milk and water to cover the tripe.
Boil the mixture for about 1.5 hours.
Serve with mustard and well-boiled potatoes.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + mustardtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together913 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Thyme + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,586 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, thyme, milk, potato):

Carrotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Chivefits better
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, thyme, milk, potato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.