Name: Lamb Cutlets with Spinach
Ingredients: Lamb loin steaks; Spinach; Flour; Butter; Coarse sea salt; Pepper; Small onions; Blade of mace; Dried or fried parsley

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lamb Cutlets with Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the steaks from the lamb loin and fry them.
Stew the spinach and place it in the dish first.
Arrange the fried cutlets around the spinach.
For the liver and lights, boil them until tender, then cut small.
Stew the liver and lights in a little of their boiling water, season with salt and pepper, and thicken with flour and butter.
Serve the minced liver and lights around the lamb head.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,025 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,400 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Spinach + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,336 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, spinach, flour, butter, pepper, onion, parsley):

Garlicfits better
Capersfits better
Cuminfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, spinach, flour, butter, pepper, onion, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.