Name: Mutton Steak and Potato
Ingredients: 1-2 mutton steaks (1.5 inches thick); pepper; salt; butter; uncooked potatoes

Why it works: Pepper and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Steak and Potato

Ingredients

Directions

Cut steaks from the thick end of a tender leg of mutton, sawing off the bone but leaving it in the steak.
Score the surface of the steak if unsure of tenderness, being careful not to let any gravy escape.
Season the steak with pepper and salt, then broil on a grill.
Cut uncooked potatoes into fillets or other shapes, fry them in butter, and garnish the steak with them.
Serve very hot.

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.

Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).