Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Braised Mutton Chops
Ingredients
Directions
Heat the dripping in a frying pan and fry the sliced onion until soft.
Add the mutton chops and brown them slightly.
Place the chops on a bed of chopped carrots, onion, celery, turnip, and tomato in a covered roaster.
Pour the fat from the pan and the hot water or weak stock over the chops.
Cover closely and cook slowly for one hour.
Turn the chops, season with pepper and coarse sea salt, dust with flour, and let them brown uncovered for 15 minutes, turning once.
Transfer the chops to a hot dish.
Rub the gravy and vegetables through a colander, boil sharply, and pour over the meat.
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.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,377 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together16,012 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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 (onion, mutton, carrot, celery, turnip, pepper, flour):
- Leekfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Okrafits better
- Tomatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against onion, mutton, carrot, celery, turnip, pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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