Name: Mutton with Turnips
Ingredients: 1 joint of mutton; 1 small smoked ox-tongue (optional); Turnips; Caper sauce, brown cucumber sauce, or oyster sauce (for serving)

Why it works: Mutton and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,558 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Mutton with Turnips

Ingredients

1 joint of mutton
1 small smoked ox-tongue (optional)
Turnips
Caper sauce, brown cucumber sauce, or oyster sauce (for serving)

Directions

Simmer the mutton gently for 2 to 2.5 hours after it begins to boil.
Boil the smoked ox-tongue until tender, if using.
Prepare the turnips by mashing them and molding into half-egg shapes.
Serve the mutton with the sauces and the mashed turnips 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.

Mutton + turniptop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,558 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together943 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mutton + saucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,087 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).