Name: Mutton Chops with Mashed Potatoes
Ingredients: loin of mutton; pepper; coarse sea salt; mashed potatoes; chopped shallots; scraped horseradish

Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mutton Chops with Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Bone the loin of mutton and cut it into thick steaks.
Season the steaks with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Broil the steaks over a clear coal fire, being careful not to overcook them.
Prepare hot mashed potatoes in a tin mold.
Arrange the chops around the mashed potatoes and serve immediately.
Serve chopped shallots and scraped horseradish on separate plates.

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.

Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together376 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together171 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together272 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,646 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, shallot, horseradish):

Mustardfits better
Chivefits better
Turnipfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, shallot, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.