Name: Mutton Cutlets with Chestnuts
Ingredients: Mutton cutlets; Chestnuts; Good broth; Sugar; Nutmeg; 1 cup of cream; Butter

Why it works: Chestnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 180 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets with Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton cutlets as previously shown.
Garnish with heated chestnuts, which should have their husks easily peeled off.
In a clean saucepan, combine the chestnuts with a little good broth and let simmer.
Once cooked, pound the chestnuts in a mortar.
In a pan, mix the chestnut pulp with a little sugar, nutmeg, and 1 cup of cream.
Reduce the mixture, then rub it through a sieve.
Heat the mixture in a saucepan and mix in some butter.
Pour the thin sauce around the cutlets.

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.

Chestnut + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together180 recipes

Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, sugar, nutmeg, cream, butter):

Almondfits better
Pistachiofits about as well
Walnutfits about as well
Chestnutthe original

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