Name: Minced Mutton
Ingredients: 1 fresh mutton chop; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 2 tablespoons water; toasted bread for serving

Why it works: Mutton and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,488 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Minced Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mince

Remove all fat and flesh from the bone of the mutton chop.
Chop the lean meat very finely.
Flavour the minced meat with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

Cook the mince in a covered jar for 30 minutes in a pan of boiling water.
Simmer the bone with 2 tablespoons of water to make gravy.
Serve the mince with the gravy and pieces of toasted bread around the dish.

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.

Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,488 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).