Name: Mutton Pie
Ingredients: loin or best end of neck of mutton; coarse sea salt; black pepper; finely minced onion; stock (made with trimmings); 3 tablespoons port wine; 1 tablespoon mushroom ketchup; puff pastry

Why it works: Onion and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mutton Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the mutton into neat steaks and remove the skin and fat.
Season the steaks with a mixture of coarse sea salt, black pepper, and finely minced onion.
If using the loin, divide the kidney in two and season it with salt and pepper.
Place the steaks in a dish and add a little stock made from the trimmings.
Pour in 3 tablespoons of port wine and 1 tablespoon of mushroom ketchup.
Cover the dish with puff pastry.

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 + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,626 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together570 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together685 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, port wine, mushroom, ketchup):

Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, port wine, mushroom, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.