Name: Deviled Beef
Ingredients: cold roast beef, sliced; mild French mustard; tarragon vinegar; coarse black pepper; soft creamed butter; butter for cooking

Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Deviled Beef

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix mild French mustard with a little tarragon vinegar, salt, and coarse black pepper.
Blend in an equal amount of soft creamed butter.
Spread the mixture on each slice of cold roast beef.
Melt 1 teaspoon of butter in a heated chafing dish.
Place a few slices of beef, spread side up, in the dish and cook quickly until the edges curl.

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.

Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together901 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

Swap the mustard

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

Shallotfits about as well
Mustardthe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Chivefits about as well

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