Name: Tongue Slices, with Spinach and Sauce Tartare
Ingredients: slices of cooked tongue; spinach; sauce tartare; lemon slices

Why it works: Spinach and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Tongue Slices, with Spinach and Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

slices of cooked tongue
spinach
sauce tartare
lemon slices

Directions

Arrange the slices of tongue in a circle on a platter.
On each slice, place a small mound of prepared spinach.
Top each spinach mound with a spoonful of sauce tartare or a slice of lemon.

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.

Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,109 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Spinach + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together756 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,598 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).