Name: Neck of Lamb and Turnips
Ingredients: 1 neck of lamb; cold water; mashed turnips; boiled carrots; caper sauce

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Neck of Lamb and Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the scrag, chine bone, and skin from the neck of lamb.
Soak the lamb in cold water for 1 hour.
Boil the lamb until cooked through.
Serve the lamb with mashed turnips around it.
Garnish with boiled carrots cut into shapes and serve with caper sauce in a butter boat.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lamb + carrottop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together724 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lamb + turniptop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together276 recipes

Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).
Turnip + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together943 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lamb + saucetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together925 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).