Name: Broiled Meats
Ingredients: chops; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; parsley

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Broiled Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Place as many chops on the broiler as it can hold and broil them like beefsteak.
Cut into the largest chop to check for doneness.
If done, transfer the chops to a heated dish over a pot of boiling water.
Season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt, then cover while cooking the remaining chops.
Serve immediately to retain flavor, arranging the chops in neat rows with small ends next to large.
Garnish with sprigs of parsley around the dish and a few over the chops.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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