Name: Riegel and Leube's Test Dinner
Ingredients: 1 ⅔ cups beef soup; ⅘ cup beefsteak; ⅓ cup white bread; ⅔ cup water

Why it works: Beef and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Riegel and Leube's Test Dinner

Ingredients

1 ⅔ cups beef soup
⅘ cup beefsteak
⅓ cup white bread
⅔ cup water

Directions

Prepare 1 ⅔ cups of beef soup.
Cook ⅘ cup of beefsteak to your liking.
Serve with ⅓ cup of white bread.
Drink ⅔ cup of water with the meal.

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.

Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 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

What each ingredient does

Beef soup: Provides the main liquid and savory beefy flavor of the dish.
Beefsteak: Supplies the protein and meaty texture, with doneness set by the cook.
White bread: Adds a soft, starchy side that soaks up the broth and balances the meal.

“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.