Name: Ragout of Lamb
Ingredients: 6 small peeled onions; 3 tablespoons flour; 3 pints water or white broth; 2 pinches coarse sea salt; 1 pinch black pepper; 2 cloves garlic, crushed; bouquet garni; vegetable garnish (flageolets, cooked Lima beans, or others)

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Ragout of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the onions in fat for about 10 minutes.
Dredge in flour and stir for 2 minutes.
Moisten with water or broth, stirring continuously.
Add salt, pepper, garlic, and bouquet garni.
Cook for 45 minutes, skimming after it begins to boil.
Remove the bouquet and pour the ragout onto a hot dish.
Garnish with vegetables.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,368 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, flour, pepper, clove, garlic):

Chickpeafits better
Black-eyed peafits better
Lentilsfits better
Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, flour, pepper, clove, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.