Name: Mutton or Lamb Chops
Ingredients: Mutton or lamb chops; Coarse sea salt; Fried bread (cut in the shape of half a large pear); Vegetables for puree (peas, spinach, turnips, or potatoes)

Why it works: Bread and peas work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry hexyl acetate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Mutton or Lamb Chops

Ingredients

Mutton or lamb chops
Coarse sea salt
Fried bread (cut in the shape of half a large pear)
Vegetables for puree (peas, spinach, turnips, or potatoes)

Directions

Cut the chops nicely and trim off the fat.
Fry the chops until they are a fine brown.
Arrange the chops on a dish with the bones meeting at the top.
Place pieces of fried bread between each chop.
Make a puree of your chosen vegetables and lay it around the bottom of the dish.

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.

Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).
Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,488 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pear + peastop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together36 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mutton + peastop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Bread + peartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together64 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).