Name: Plain Lamb Cutlet
Ingredients: lamb cutlet; coarse sea salt; black pepper; lemon; watercress

Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Plain Lamb Cutlet

Ingredients

Directions

Season the lamb cutlet with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Grill the cutlet over a brisk charcoal fire until juicy and cooked to your liking.
Serve the cutlet with its own gravy, a slice of lemon, and a bed of watercress.

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.

Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lamb + watercresstop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).