Name: Neck of Mutton, Boiled, and a Purée of Turnips
Ingredients: 1 neck of mutton; turnips; butter; cream; pepper; salt; carrot for garnish

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 Mutton, Boiled, and a Purée of Turnips

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the turnips until tender.
Squeeze the turnips very dry and rub them through a fine sieve.
In a stewpan, combine the turnip puree with butter, cream, pepper, and salt; heat until hot.
Serve the turnip puree on a dish and place the boiled mutton on top.
Garnish with carrot and serve.

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).
Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,252 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, cream, pepper, carrot):

Potatofits better
Leekfits better
Capsicumfits about as well
Turnipthe original

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