Name: Mutton Cutlets with Jugt of Pepper and Salt
Ingredients: 1 neck of mutton; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 1 Bombay onion; 2 handfuls of sorrel; 1 lettuce; 2 tablespoons of butter

Why it works: Sorrel and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Cutlets with Jugt of Pepper and Salt

Ingredients

Directions

Divide the neck of mutton into neat cutlets.
Season the cutlets with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Marinate the cutlets for the rest of the day.
Melt the butter in a light saucepan.
Add the chopped onion, sorrel, and lettuce to the melted butter.

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.

Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together317 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + sorreltop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together419 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + sorreltop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together459 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, pepper, sorrel, lettuce, butter):

Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Turnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, sorrel, lettuce, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.