Name: Fricassee of Beef
Ingredients: thin slices of cold cooked beef; butter; coarse sea salt; black pepper; fresh parsley; lemon juice; Saratoga potatoes

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fricassee of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Heat butter in a frying pan until hot.
Add thin slices of cold cooked beef and heat quickly.
Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, chopped fresh parsley, and lemon juice.
Serve hot with Saratoga potatoes.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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 potato

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

Carrotfits about as well
Shallotfits about as well
Potatothe original
Chivefits about as well

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