Name: Lamb and Tomato
Ingredients: 6 tomatoes; cold lamb, chopped; grated bread crumbs; pepper; coarse sea salt; butter; sugar

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lamb and Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tomatoes by draining off as much water as possible.
In a baking dish, layer the ingredients: start with bread crumbs, then lamb, and then tomatoes.
Season each layer with pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, and a little sugar.
Finish with a layer of bread crumbs on top.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the top is brown and the dish is cooked through.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Tomato + lambtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together979 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

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

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, bread, pepper, butter, sugar):

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, bread, pepper, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.