Name: Salt Beef and Pork Stewed
Ingredients: beef; pork; water; carrots; potatoes; pepper; mixed herbs; flour or rice; toasted bread or broken biscuit

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Salt Beef and Pork Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the beef and pork into dice and place in a pot or pan to stew.
If the meat is very salty, pour off the water after stewing for 2 minutes and add fresh water.
Stew gently for half an hour.
Add vegetables, pepper, and mixed herbs.
Thicken with flour or rice.
When the vegetables are cooked, remove the stew and add toasted bread or broken biscuit.

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.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,668 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, potato, pepper, flour, bread):

Capsicumfits about as well
Tomatofits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Carrotthe original

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