Name: Lamb Chops
Ingredients: lamb chops; melted butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; green peas; vegetables (e.g., mashed potatoes, spinach, beans, cauliflower, stuffed baked tomatoes, tomato sauce)

Why it works: Spinach and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 365 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lamb Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Trim the lamb chops and scrape the bones.
Roll the chops in melted butter.
Broil the chops carefully until done.
Rub more butter over the cooked chops and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Cover the ends of the bones with ruffled paper.
Serve the chops arranged in a circle around green peas and your choice of vegetables.

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 + beanstop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together365 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Spinach + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together117 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Peas + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together313 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Potato + spinachtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together646 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, pepper, potato, spinach, beans, cauliflower):

Lentilsfits better
Chickpeafits better
Almondfits about as well
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, pepper, potato, spinach, beans, cauliflower. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.