Name: First Rate Western Stew
Ingredients: 1 pound breast of mutton or lamb, cut into pieces; Salt and pepper to taste; 2 onions, chopped; 1 bunch parsley, chopped; 1 bunch mixed sweet herbs, chopped; ½ cup tomato ketchup; Water, enough to cover the meat

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

First Rate Western Stew

Ingredients

1 pound breast of mutton or lamb, cut into pieces
Salt and pepper to taste
2 onions, chopped
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 bunch mixed sweet herbs, chopped
½ cup tomato ketchup
Water, enough to cover the meat

Directions

In a pot, combine the mutton or lamb, salt, pepper, onions, parsley, and sweet herbs.
Add enough water to cover the ingredients and simmer gently for 2 hours.
Stir in the tomato ketchup and bring to a boil.
Serve hot.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,398 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or lamb breast: Provides the meat and rich fat that flavour the long-simmered stew and make it tender.
Onions: Soften during simmering and add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Tomato ketchup: Adds sweetness, acidity and tomato flavour to the finished stew.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, parsley, tomato, ketchup, meat):

Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, parsley, tomato, ketchup, meat. 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.