Name: Dinners
Ingredients: boiled rice; molasses; beans; pork; beef; soup; vegetables; wheat bread; salt fish

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Dinners

Ingredients

Directions

Boil rice according to package instructions and serve with molasses.
Prepare beans by baking or stewing them, and serve with pork.
Cook beef and prepare soup; serve with vegetables and wheat bread.
Bake beet vegetables and serve with wheat bread.
Prepare salt fish and serve with vegetables and wheat bread.

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.

Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Rice + beanstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,017 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beans + wheattop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together166 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Rice + wheattop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together423 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, molasses, pork, beef, wheat, bread, fish):

Beansthe original
Peanutfits about as well
Walnutfits less well
Sesamefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, molasses, pork, beef, wheat, bread, fish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.