Name: Mutton, Etc
Ingredients: 2 shallots, finely chopped; 2 teaspoons chopped parsley; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon baked flour; 2 teaspoons mushroom ketchup; ⅓ cup sherry

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mutton, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Heat a pan over high heat.
Add shallots, parsley, pepper, and salt; shake the pan continually.
Dredge in the baked flour and add mushroom ketchup.
Simmer for 20 minutes.
Pour in the sherry, boil briefly, and serve hot.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,176 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).
Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,081 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, pepper, flour, mushroom, ketchup, sherry):

Thymefits better
Capersfits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well
Parsleythe original

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