Name: A Years Cookery
Ingredients: 1 piece of mutton; vegetables (your choice); butter; 3 pickled gherkins; coarse sea salt; pepper

Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 5,442 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Stew the mutton gently until hot through.
Mince the stewed vegetables.
Sauté the minced vegetables in a small saucepan with butter for 3-4 minutes.
Place the mutton on a dish and strain some sauce over it.
Arrange the minced vegetables around the mutton.
Chop the gherkins finely and mix them with the remaining sauce.
Serve the gherkin sauce in a tureen.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Mutton + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Mutton + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,781 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together85,512 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).