Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓
A Pepper-pot
Ingredients
Directions
Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.
Add the small-cut vegetables.
Add 2 pounds of neck of mutton and 1 pound of pickled pork.
Stew until the meat is quite tender.
Half an hour before serving, remove the shell from the lobster or crab and add it to the stew.
Optionally, boil a small quantity of rice with the stew.
Season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste.
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.
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Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together427 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together526 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Spinach + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together320 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Neck of mutton
- Long stewing breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and enriching the broth.
- Pickled pork
- Its salt and fat season the broth and add savory depth as it cooks.
- Lobster or crab
- Adds sweet, briny shellfish flavor to the stew when added near the end.
- Vegetables
- Contribute body, sweetness and flavor to the broth as they simmer.
The step that matters
Stew until the meat is quite tender. Mutton neck is tough and rich in connective tissue. It needs long, gentle simmering, not a hard boil, so the collagen softens into gelatin and the meat becomes tender rather than stringy.
Swap the peas
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, spinach, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, mutton):
- Lentilsfits better
- Beansfits better
- Chickpeafits better
- Peasthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, spinach, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, mutton. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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