Name: Cold Beef with Potatoes
Ingredients: cold beef; coarse sea salt; black pepper; mace (optional); raw potatoes; butter; bread crumbs; flour

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cold Beef with Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into small pieces.
Crack the bones and place them in a saucepan with salt, covering them with cold water.
Simmer until the water is reduced by half, then strain the bones from the gravy.
Season the meat with pepper, salt, and mace if desired, then add it to the gravy.
Slice the raw potatoes and add them to the stew.
Cook until the potatoes are tender, then serve with toasted bread at the bottom of the dish.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, potato, butter, bread, flour):

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, potato, butter, bread, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.