Name: Mutton Pudding
Ingredients: beef suet paste; thick mutton cutlets or leg steaks; pepper; coarse sea salt; parsley; thyme; 2 slices of onion, chopped; slices of potatoes

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mutton Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Line a 2-quart pudding basin with beef suet paste.
Fill the basin with thick mutton cutlets or leg steaks.
Season the meat with pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, thyme, and chopped onion.
Add slices of potatoes between each layer of meat.
Wet the edges of the paste around the top of the basin.
Cover with a piece of paste rolled to the size of the basin.
Seal the edge by pressing down with your thumb.
Twist the edges of the paste to create a corded appearance.
Steam or boil the pudding for about 3 hours.
Carefully turn it out onto a platter and serve with rich gravy.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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).
Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 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 onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mutton, pepper, parsley, thyme, potato):

Carrotfits better
Leekfits about as well
Tomatofits about as well
Onionthe original

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