Why it works: Beef and pork 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 ↓
Sea Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare a thick pudding crust and line a dish with it.
Layer sliced onions at the bottom of the dish.
Add a layer of sliced salt beef and some fat.
Next, add a layer of sliced potatoes.
Then, add a layer of sliced pork followed by another layer of onions.
Sprinkle pepper over all the layers.
Cover with the crust and tie it down tightly with a cloth dipped in boiling water and floured.
Boil for two hours and serve in the dish.
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.
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Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,023 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Potato + porktop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,668 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
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Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,092 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,052 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, pork, pepper):
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Tomatofits about as well
- Onionthe original
- Carrotfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, pork, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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