Name: Mock Turtle with Cow-Heel
Ingredients: 2 pounds cow heel; 2 pounds gravy beef; 1 onion, chopped; 1 tablespoon parsley, chopped; 1 lemon peel, chopped; 4 hard-boiled eggs, yolks only; forcemeat balls, to taste

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mock Turtle with Cow-Heel

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the cow heel and gravy beef together with the chopped onion, parsley, and lemon peel.
Boil the eggs hard and cut the yolks.
Add the yolks to the stew.
Season the mixture to your taste with forcemeat balls.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,866 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cow heel: Gelatin-rich collagen that breaks down during stewing to give the soup body and a silky mouthfeel.
Gravy beef: Provides meaty flavour and savoury depth as it simmers into the broth.
Hard-boiled eggs: Yolks are mashed into the stew to thicken it slightly and enrich its texture.