Name: Beef Steaks
Ingredients: beef steaks (cut from the rump, ½ inch thick); mutton suet; grated horseradish; butter; white pepper; coarse sea salt; hot gravy; eschalot or young onions (shredded)

Why it works: Horseradish and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare a clear fire using coak for broiling.
Clean the gridiron and rub the bars with mutton suet.
Place the steaks on the gridiron and turn them often to retain the gravy.
Lay a piece of fat on the steaks while cooking.
Once cooked, top with grated horseradish and a small amount of butter mixed with white pepper and salt.
Serve in a dish with hot gravy and shredded eschalot or young onions.

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.

Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,784 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beef + horseradishtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 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 white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mutton, horseradish, butter, onion):

Garlicfits better
Capersfits better
Parsleyfits better
White pepperthe original

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