Name: Rump Steaks, Gravy for
Ingredients: 1 ounce butter; flour (for dredging); ½ cup boiling water; 1 tablespoon ketchup; ½ teaspoon pepper; coarse sea salt (to taste); parsley (for garnish); horseradish (for garnish)

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 ↓

Rump Steaks, Gravy for

Ingredients

Directions

Pour the fat out of the pan.
Dredge the pan with flour and let it brown slightly.
Add the butter and mix it with the flour in the pan until well combined.
Gradually mix in the boiling water until the sauce thickens to the consistency of cream.
Stir in the ketchup, pepper, and salt, and keep stirring until the sauce boils for 1-2 minutes.
Pour the sauce over the steaks through a sieve.
Garnish the steaks with parsley or scraped horseradish.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together743 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ketchup + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together223 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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 (butter, flour, ketchup, pepper, parsley):

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Turnipfits about as well
Horseradishthe original

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