Name: Butcher's Meat
Ingredients: beef; mutton; veal; lamb; pork; apple sauce; pease-pudding; tomato

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Butcher's Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Order beef to be hung until tender.
Ensure mutton is hung long enough to be tender.
Use necks of mutton for stock pot when newly killed.
Order veal and sweetbreads in advance.
Substitute lamb for mutton when in season.
Prepare a roast loin of pork with apple sauce.
Boil a leg of pork slightly salted and serve with pease-pudding.
Cook small delicate pork cutlets with a purée of tomato.

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.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together896 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together623 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mutton, veal, lamb, pork, sauce, tomato):

Cherryfits about as well
Coconutfits about as well
Avocadofits about as well
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mutton, veal, lamb, pork, sauce, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.