Name: Mutton Cutlets, Braised
Ingredients: 7 or 8 mutton cutlets from the best end of the neck; 3 ounces of larding bacon; 4 tablespoons of butter; ½ pint of stock; 1 onion, sliced; 1 carrot, sliced; 1 or 2 strips of celery, sliced; 1 small turnip, sliced; 1 bouquet garni (parsley, thyme, bay leaf); Meat glaze; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; ½ pint of tomato or demi-glace sauce; Peas, spinach, or other vegetable garnish

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets: Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist cooking.
Larding bacon: Adds fat and savoury flavour that melts into the lean meat and crisps at the end.
Butter: Adds richness and helps brown the vegetables at the start of cooking.
Stock: Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the meat and vegetables and builds the sauce.
Onion: Releases sweetness and aroma into the braising liquid as it softens.

The step that matters

Cooking the cutlets gently under cover. Slow, gentle simmering with a lid and buttered paper keeps the liquid from boiling hard, so the connective tissue in the mutton softens without the meat drying out or toughening.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, carrot, celery, turnip, parsley, thyme):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, butter, carrot, celery, turnip, parsley, thyme. 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.

Mutton Cutlets, Braised