Name: Lamb Chops
Ingredients: butter; lamb chops; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 1 raw egg; pine cracker crumbs; lard

Why it works: Pepper and pine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lamb Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Heat butter in a chafing dish until smoking hot.
Add the lamb chops and cover for a moment.
Turn the chops, season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Cook until golden brown, about 4 to 5 minutes for small chops and 10 minutes for large English 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 + pinetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together687 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + pinetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together358 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Lamb + pinetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together80 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).