Name: Epigrams of Mutton
Ingredients: 1½ lb breast of mutton; 1 small carrot, sliced; 1 onion, chopped; 1 small bunch of herbs (bay leaf, thyme, parsley); 4 peppercorns; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 egg; bread crumbs

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Epigrams of Mutton

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Place the mutton in a stewpan with the sliced carrot, chopped onion, herbs, peppercorns, and salt.
Cover with cold water and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat and simmer until the mutton is tender but not falling apart, allowing bones to be easily removed.
Let cool, then prepare the dish the next day.

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,563 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, thyme, parsley, egg, bread):

Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, thyme, parsley, egg, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.