Name: Sandwiches Made with Cold Mutton
Ingredients: 2 cups cold cooked mutton, finely chopped; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon capers; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; buttered whole wheat bread; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Capers and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sandwiches Made with Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

In a bowl, combine the chopped mutton, salt, capers, and lemon juice.

Assemble and serve

Spread the mixture over buttered whole wheat bread.
Top with another slice of bread, trim off the crust, and serve on a bed of lettuce leaves.

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.

Capers + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Wheat + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together105 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked mutton: Forms the main filling and provides the savory body of the sandwich.
Capers: Add briny, sharp bursts of flavor that contrast with the rich meat.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the meat and capers.
Buttered whole wheat bread: Provides the structure that holds the filling and adds fat and a toasty flavor.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, capers, wheat, bread, lettuce):

Avocadofits better
Limefits about as well
Cherryfits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, capers, wheat, bread, lettuce. 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.