Name: Frickadel of Mutton
Ingredients: 2 pounds lean mutton; 2 ounces lean bacon, soaked in boiling milk; 1 onion, minced; 2 teaspoons chopped parsley; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Black pepper, to taste; Nutmeg, to taste; 2 eggs; Brown sauce, for stewing

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Frickadel of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

Mince the mutton and soaked bacon together with the onion, parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Moisten the mixture with the eggs and shape it into a large sausage.
Tie the sausage in a piece of buttered muslin.

Stew and serve

Stew the sausage gently in brown sauce for 2 hours, or 2.5 hours if using fresh meat.
Remove the muslin and strain the sauce over the meat 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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 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

What each ingredient does

Mutton: Provides the main meat body and rich flavour once minced and stewed.
Eggs: Bind the minced mixture so it holds its sausage shape while stewing.
Bacon: Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the lean mutton moist.
Onion: Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the meat mixture.

The step that matters

Tying the sausage in muslin. The mixture is soft and unbound before cooking. If the muslin is loose or the sausage is not firmly wrapped, it can break apart in the stewing liquid, so it should be tied snugly to hold its shape.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, milk, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, egg, sauce):

Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, milk, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, egg, sauce. 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.

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Frickadel of Mutton