Name: Mutton or Lamb Chops
Ingredients: Mutton or lamb chops; Coarse sea salt; Vegetables for puree (peas, spinach, turnips, or potatoes); Bread

Why it works: Peas and bread work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry hexyl acetate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Mutton or Lamb Chops

Ingredients

Mutton or lamb chops
Coarse sea salt
Vegetables for puree (peas, spinach, turnips, or potatoes)
Bread

Directions

Cut the chops nicely and trim off the fat.
Fry the chops until they are a fine brown.
Arrange the chops on a serving dish with the bones meeting at the top.
Cut the bread into the shape of half a large pear and place it between each chop.
Make a puree of your chosen vegetables and lay it around the bottom of the 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.

Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).
Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,488 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mutton + peastop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).