Name: And the Meat Served with Onion Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cow-heel; 1 quart of milk, 2 inches of cinnamon stick; 3 or 4 onions; ½ pint of milk; 1 oz. of flour; 1 oz. of butter; Sugar to taste

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

And the Meat Served with Onion Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Buy a dressed cow-heel from a tripe shop.
Cut the cow-heel into small pieces.
Place the pieces in a saucepan with 1 quart of milk and 2 inches of cinnamon.
Cover the saucepan with a lid and tie it down with paper.
Put the saucepan in a slow oven to stew for at least 3 hours.
If no oven is available, place the saucepan by the fire to stew.
After stewing, remove the saucepan from the oven, take off the lid, and strain the milk into a basin, sweetening to taste.
Set the milk aside until the jelly is set; it can be eaten hot or cold.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 30,779 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

Yorkshire Pudding264 recipes

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And the Meat Served with Onion Sauce