Name: Lamb or Mutton Fricassee
Ingredients: Lamb or mutton, cut into serving pieces; Coarse sea salt; Flour; Butter; Boiling water; Salt and pepper; Cranberry jelly or stewed tomatoes with crumbed crackers (optional); Asparagus, macaroni, or peas (for serving)

Why it works: Lamb and asparagus work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 207 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lamb or Mutton Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the meat with coarse sea salt and flour.
Fry the meat in butter until browned.
Place the meat in a stew kettle and cover with boiling water.
Cook gently until the meat is tender.
Remove the meat and bones, which should slip out easily.
Make a brown sauce with the cooking liquid and season with salt and pepper.
Pour the sauce over the meat and serve with asparagus, macaroni, or peas.

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.

Lamb + asparagustop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together207 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Cranberry + asparagustop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Pepper + asparagustop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,968 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + cranberrytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together218 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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 cranberry

The recipe marks cranberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, butter, pepper, asparagus):

Lemonfits better
Limefits about as well
Avocadofits about as well
Cranberrythe original

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