Name: Boiled Mutton Chops
Ingredients: mutton chops; whole turnips; coarse sea salt; black pepper; optional: celery; optional: carrots; optional: pearl barley

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

If available, add a few bones to enhance the broth.
Bring a pot of water to a boil.
Add the mutton chops, whole turnips, salt, and pepper to the boiling water.
Boil for 45 minutes.
Serve in a tureen, adding celery, carrots, or pearl barley if desired.

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.

Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together629 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, turnip, pepper, carrot, barley):

Celerythe original
Parsleyfits about as well
Marjoramfits less well
Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, turnip, pepper, carrot, barley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.