Name: Braised Beef, a LA Jardiniere
Ingredients: 1 cup green peas or string beans, cut into short pieces; 1 cup potatoes, diced and boiled tender; 1 cooked carrot, diced; 1 cooked turnip, diced; 12 button onions, boiled; 6 tomatoes, baked whole in their skins or stuffed and then baked; Sauce from braised beef

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 ↓

Braised Beef, a LA Jardiniere

Ingredients

1 cup green peas or string beans, cut into short pieces
1 cup potatoes, diced and boiled tender
1 cooked carrot, diced
1 cooked turnip, diced
12 button onions, boiled
6 tomatoes, baked whole in their skins or stuffed and then baked
Sauce from braised beef

Directions

Prepare the meat and sauce as directed in the previous recipe.
Arrange the vegetables in small heaps around the meat on the serving dish, each type separated for color contrast.
Pour some sauce over the vegetables and meat before serving.
When carving, include at least two kinds of vegetables with each portion of beef.

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).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, turnip, onion, tomato, sauce, beef):

Beansfits better
Lentilsfits better
Chickpeafits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, turnip, onion, tomato, sauce, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.