Name: Mutton Stew
Ingredients: cold mutton; coarse sea salt; whole peppercorns; sweet basil; celery heads; flour

Why it works: Basil and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mutton Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the cold mutton into slices, trimming off sinew, gristle, and skin.
Place the mutton slices in a saucepan.
In a separate jar, keep scraps for soups or gravies.
If no gravy is available, simmer scraps in 2 cups boiling water with a bundle of sweet basil, celery, salt, and peppercorns for 30 minutes.
Pour the gravy over the mutton slices and warm slowly.
Remove the meat, cover it to keep warm, and thicken the gravy with flour, simmering for 5 minutes.
Serve the stew hot.

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.

Basil + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,905 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Basil + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,038 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mutton + celerytop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together928 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,695 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).