Name: Beef Kobart
Ingredients: thin slices of sirloin beef; butter; gravy; 1 shallot, chopped; 1 teaspoon anchovy essence; mushrooms, sliced; oysters, cleaned; sippets of bread

Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Kobart

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the beef slices in butter for a few minutes.
Transfer the beef to a stew-pan.
Add gravy, shallot, anchovy essence, mushrooms, and oysters.
Thicken the gravy.
Serve with fried sippets of bread.

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.

Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Anchovy + oystertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together603 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, anchovy, mushroom, oyster, bread):

Shallotthe original
Tomatofits about as well
Onionfits about as well
Potatofits about as well

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