Name: Cold Mutton
Ingredients: shoulder of mutton, roasted or baked; hard-boiled eggs (whites and yolks); chopped parsley; capers; mustard; pepper; coarse sea salt; vinegar; oil

Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the cold mutton into thin, even pieces.
Place a round cutter in the center of an oval dish.
Arrange the mutton slices around the cutter, overlapping them.
Fill the empty spaces with finely chopped hard-boiled egg whites and yolks, keeping them separate.
Surround the yolk with a string of chopped yolk, then a string of chopped white, and finally a string of chopped parsley.
Remove the cutter and place a rose or small bunch of violets in the center.
Add one or three capers on each heap of yolk and sprinkle capers around the egg white.
Garnish with radishes around the dish.
For the sauce, mix mustard, pepper, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.
Gradually add vinegar while beating with a fork, then add oil in the same manner until well mixed.

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.

Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together624 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, egg, parsley, capers, pepper, vinegar):

Shallotfits better
Mustardthe original
Chivefits about as well
Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, egg, parsley, capers, pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.