Name: Boiled Beef
Ingredients: 4 pounds short ribs of beef; ½ cup salt; 1 teaspoon pepper; 4 small carrots, scraped; 4 small turnips, peeled; 2 onions; a bunch of soup herbs; 4 quarts boiling water

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 ↓

Boiled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Tie the beef tightly.

Cook

Place it in a pot with boiling water.
Add salt, pepper, carrots, turnips, onions, and soup herbs.
Cover and simmer for 2½ hours.

Serve

Serve the vegetables on the same dish as the meat.
Keep the broth for future use.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Short ribs of beef: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering in liquid.
Carrots: Add sweetness and body to the broth as they cook.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and soft texture to the finished dish.
Onions: Release sugars and aroma into the broth during simmering.