Name: Dutch Sauce for Boiled Mutton
Ingredients: 1 handful of parsley, minced finely; ½ cup bread crumbs; 3 tablespoons vinegar

Why it works: Parsley and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,588 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce for Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

1 handful of parsley, minced finely
½ cup bread crumbs
3 tablespoons vinegar

Directions

Mince the parsley finely.
Combine the minced parsley and bread crumbs in a bowl to achieve a tolerable thickness.
Add the vinegar to the mixture in a sauceboat.

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.

Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,477 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Bread + vinegartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,672 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley: Provides fresh, herbal aroma and bright green flavour to the sauce.
Bread crumbs: Thickens the sauce and gives it a soft, body-giving texture.
Vinegar: Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of boiled mutton.