Name: Beef Steak and Mutton Chops
Ingredients: beef steak; mutton chops; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; lard oil; bread crumbs; salt pork

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Beef Steak and Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Place a wire drainer in a tin pan.
Add a little butter to the pan.
Place thick slices of beef steak or mutton chops on the drainer.
Cook according to the thickness of the meat.
For sausages, drain the lard oil into a grease pot and serve.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.
For fish, pat a little batter on top and sprinkle with bread crumbs, or cut the fish crosswise and lay in thin strips of salt pork, then sprinkle with bread crumbs.

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.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + porktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,239 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).