Name: Lamb-Chops with Cucumber Sauce
Ingredients: Lamb chops; 1 or more cucumbers; Butter; Flour; Mutton broth or stock; Vinegar; Salt; Pepper

Why it works: Lamb and mutton work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 598 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lamb-Chops with Cucumber Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Peel and slice the cucumbers. Season with salt and pepper.
In a stew pan, melt a little butter. Stir in a dusting of flour.
Add the sliced cucumbers and enough broth to cover them. Boil until tender.
If possible, broil the lamb chops after coating them in egg and breadcrumbs. Otherwise, fry them in a small amount of butter.
Arrange the cooked lamb chops on a hot dish.
Add vinegar to the cucumber sauce, boil briefly, and serve in the center of the chops.

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 + muttontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,991 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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 cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, flour, mutton, vinegar, pepper):

Shallotfits better
Potatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Cucumberthe original

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