Name: Roasted Mutton
Ingredients: Mutton; Browned flour; Pungent sauces or catsup; Currant jelly

Why it works: Flour and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,078 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Roasted Mutton

Ingredients

Mutton
Browned flour
Pungent sauces or catsup
Currant jelly

Directions

Prepare the mutton for the oven as you would beef.
Cover the mutton tightly for part of the cooking time to retain juices.
Serve with gravy made from the drippings, thickened with browned flour.
Flavor the gravy with pungent sauces or catsup.
Accompany with currant jelly.

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.

Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,078 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mutton + saucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,087 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).
Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,077 recipes
Mutton + curranttop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,695 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).