Name: Mock Turtle
Ingredients: 1 chump of veal; coarse sea salt; French beans; sorrel; glaze

Why it works: Beans and sorrel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 40 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mock Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and glaze

Prepare the chump of veal by braising it until tender.
Glaze the veal.
Ensure the dish is well-seasoned with coarse sea salt.

Serve

Serve the veal with French beans and sorrel.

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.

Beans + sorreltop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together40 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Veal + beanstop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together158 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Veal + sorreltop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together151 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal: Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow braising.
French beans: Add a crisp, fresh vegetable texture that contrasts with the tender veal.
Sorrel: Adds a sharp, lemony acidity that brightens the rich meat.