Name: Fore Quarter of Lamb
Ingredients: 1 quarter of lamb (shoulder, breast, and ribs); ½ Seville orange (juice); pepper (to taste); coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Orange and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,402 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Fore Quarter of Lamb

Ingredients

1 quarter of lamb (shoulder, breast, and ribs)
½ Seville orange (juice)
pepper (to taste)
coarse sea salt (to taste)

Directions

Separate the shoulder from the scoven by cutting under the knuckle, leaving some meat on the ribs.
Place the shoulder on a separate dish.
Squeeze the juice of half a Seville orange over the remaining part.
Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Cut along the line to separate the ribs from the gristly part.

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.

Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,402 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lamb + orangetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together123 recipes

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