Name: Roast Neck of Mutton
Ingredients: 1 whole neck of mutton; flour; coarse sea salt; pepper; 1 egg; fresh parsley, chopped; onions; stock

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 ↓

Roast Neck of Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
Mix minced meat with chopped parsley, pepper, salt, and enough egg to bind.
Place the mixture on the mutton and bind it lightly with tape.
Rub the outside with flour, pepper, and salt.
Roast slowly for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Fry the bones with onions until brown.
Make gravy with the fried bones, a little stock, and any leftover meat.
Thicken the gravy and pour it around the meat.
Garnish with stewed or glazed onions.

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).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, flour, pepper, egg, parsley):

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

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