Name: Mutton-chops Delicately Stewed, and Good Mutton Broth
Ingredients: Mutton chops; Cold water; 1 Onion; Turnips

Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton-chops Delicately Stewed, and Good Mutton Broth

Ingredients

Mutton chops
Cold water
1 Onion
Turnips

Directions

Place the mutton chops in a stew pan and cover them with cold water.
Add the onion and bring to a boil, then skim off any foam.
Cover the pan tightly and reduce the heat to very low, simmering for about 45 minutes until the chops are tender.
Boil the turnips separately or with the chops.
Serve the chops and turnips in a deep dish with the broth they were stewed in.

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.

Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,558 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).