Name: Fried Slices of Lamb
Ingredients: Cold lamb, sliced; Salt, to taste; Butter, for melting; Flour, for thickening; Beef stock; Walnut pickle; Parsley, for garnish

Why it works: Lamb and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 896 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Slices of Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Season the cold lamb slices with salt.
Fry the slices in a pan until heated through.
Place the fried lamb in a dish and pour melted butter over them.
In a saucepan, add flour and beef stock, then stir in walnut pickle.
Bring the mixture to a boil while stirring continuously.
Serve the lamb slices in the sauce, garnished with fried parsley.

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.

Lamb + beeftop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together896 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together865 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, flour, beef, parsley):

Almondfits better
Chickpeafits better
Beansfits better
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, flour, beef, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.