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Beef Caitapees

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Caitapees

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut rounds of bread and fry them until golden.

  2. Butter the fried bread rounds and sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover each round with thin slices of lean cold roast beef.

  4. Brush a thin coating of good meat glaze over the beef.

  5. Let it cool, then garnish with scraped horseradish and parsley before serving.

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.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, beef, meat, parsley):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, beef, meat, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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