Name: For Boiled Mutton
Ingredients: mutton; drawn butter; capers; carrots; parsley; currant jelly

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

For Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the mutton until tender.
Serve with drawn butter and capers on top.
Arrange carrots and parsley around the dish.
Serve currant jelly on the side.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + carrottop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together288 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,637 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton: Is the main cooked meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in water.
Drawn butter: Adds richness and fat that complements the lean, boiled meat.
Capers: Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Currant jelly: Provides sweetness and tartness that balances the savoury meat.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, capers, carrot, parsley):

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Cherryfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, capers, carrot, parsley. 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.