Name: Boiled Leg of Mutton
Ingredients: 1 leg of mutton; cold water; caper sauce; mashed turnips; greens; carrots

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Leg of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the leg of mutton in cold water for 2 hours.
Wrap the leg in a cloth and boil it.
Serve with caper sauce, mashed turnips, greens, and carrots.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,878 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,558 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Sauce + turniptop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together943 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + carrottop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,509 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).