Name: A Sick Dinner
Ingredients: mutton chop; mealy potato; jelly; Graham bread; invalid's cup pudding

Why it works: Mutton and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,488 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Sick Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Broil the thick, tender part of the mutton chop.
Bake a mealy potato until soft.
Serve with a little jelly.
Slice the Graham bread.
Prepare half of an invalid's cup pudding.

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.

Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,488 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together434 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).