Name: Mutton Minced
Ingredients: 1 lb tinned roast mutton; 1 onion; 1 bunch dried herbs; 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce; 1 cup gravy; a pinch of nutmeg; 1 lb mashed potatoes; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Make gravy from the tinned mutton and season it with Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and coarse sea salt. Boil the dried herbs in the gravy.
Mash the potatoes and line a buttered pie dish with them.
Add a layer of finely minced mutton, moistening it with the gravy.
Fry the onion and scatter it over the mutton layer.
Cover with another layer of mashed potatoes.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,052 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, sauce, potato, pepper):

Garlicfits better
Parsleyfits better
Celeryfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, sauce, potato, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.