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Hungarian Goulash

A hearty stew of veal, beef, potatoes, carrots, turnips, and paprika simmered in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hungarian Goulash

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Brown the meat

  1. Cook the sliced onion in pork fat until browned.

  2. Remove the onion and brown the veal and beef in the same fat.

  3. Transfer the meat to a casserole and add boiling water and paprika.

  4. Cover the casserole.

  5. Place the covered casserole in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Fry the vegetables

  1. Heat more fat in the frying pan.

  2. Fry the potato, carrot, and turnip balls until golden.

Finish and serve

  1. After 1½ hours, add the sautéed vegetables to the casserole.

  2. Stir in salt, bay leaf, clove, and flour mixed with cold water.

  3. Add 1 cup of boiling water.

  4. Stir well.

  5. Add the chopped chili pepper.

  6. Cover the casserole.

  7. Cook gently for another 1½ hours.

  8. Serve from the casserole.

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.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal and beef
Provide the main meaty body, becoming tender during long, gentle cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a richer, silkier sauce.
Potatoes, carrots, and turnips
Add starchy body and sweetness, holding their shape as they cook in the sauce.
Paprika
Adds a sweet, earthy red colour and characteristic flavour to the sauce.
Onion
Browning builds savoury, sweet depth as the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the onion and meat. Browning caramelises sugars and proteins through the Maillard reaction, creating the deep flavour the sauce depends on. Pale meat or onion yields a flatter, less savoury goulash.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, veal, beef, potato, carrot, turnip):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, veal, beef, potato, carrot, turnip. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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