Name: Boiled Lamb
Ingredients: hind quarter of lamb; coarse salt; butter; hard boiled eggs; parsley; capers; mint sauce (optional)

Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Wrap the hind quarter of lamb in a coarse towel.
Place it in a pot of warm water and boil slowly until tender.
Add a little salt to the water.
Remove the lamb and dress it with a nice butter sauce.
Cut hard boiled eggs into rings and place them over the lamb.
Add bits of parsley that have been scalded in hot water.
Incorporate capers into the butter sauce or serve with mint sauce.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lamb + minttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together772 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, egg, parsley, capers, sauce):

Tarragonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Dillfits better
Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, egg, parsley, capers, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.