Name: Boiling Meat
Ingredients: knuckle of meat; writing paper; turnips; carrots; lemon

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiling Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Trim and wipe the knuckle of meat.
Wrap it in a piece of writing paper to hold it while carving.
Garnish the dish with thin slices of turnips, carrots, or lemon.
If the ham is to be cut cold, boil it gently for an additional 30 minutes. If cutting hot, follow standard boiling time.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,351 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Turnip + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together770 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Meat + carrottop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,905 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + turniptop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together930 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).