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Beef Short Rib and Onion Cottage Pie Recipe

A decadent take on a cottage pie, using beef short ribs, port, red wine, marrow and plenty of fresh veg.

This recipe’s ingredient list has no crust or pastry, so it bakes more like a fruit dish than a pastry pie.

By lovefood · From Open Recipes · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Star anise and rosemary share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 45 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The recipe

4 people
Prep35 min
Cook4 hr 15 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By lovefood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Star anise + rosemarytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Thyme + rosemarytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Carrot + star anisetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the star anise

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, leek, garlic, thyme, onion, red wine, chicken):

  1. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  4. Star anisethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, leek, garlic, thyme, onion, red wine, chicken. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).