Name: Lamb
Ingredients: 18 heads of mushrooms; 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley; salt; pepper; 1 teaspoon sugar; 2 egg yolks; 2 tablespoons cream; lemon juice

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.
Split the feet lengthwise and place them in a stewpan with mushrooms and parsley.
Pour the sauce over, season with salt, pepper, and sugar, and boil gently for 7-8 minutes.
Beat the egg yolks with cream and lemon juice, then stir into the sauce without boiling.
Serve on a hot dish.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, sugar, egg, cream, lemon):

Nutmegfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Tarragonfits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, sugar, egg, cream, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.