Name: Mutton Chops
Ingredients: mutton chops; wine vinegar; cloves; mace; peppercorns; coarse sea salt; minced shallot; fresh butter; Harvey sauce (optional)

Why it works: Clove and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,677 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mutton Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate mutton chops in a mixture of wine vinegar, cloves, mace, peppercorns, and coarse sea salt for a few hours.
Broil the chops over a clear fire, turning them frequently to retain their gravy.
Serve each chop separately on a hot plate, preferably a silver hot-water plate.
Add a small amount of minced shallot and a piece of fresh butter under each chop for extra flavor.
If the gravy is scanty, pour a little Harvey sauce into the plate, but use it sparingly.

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.

Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,677 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,374 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,493 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, wine, vinegar, clove, shallot, butter, sauce):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, wine, vinegar, clove, shallot, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.