Why it works: Beef and grass work together. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Baked Beef Head
Ingredients
Directions
Dig a hole in the ground large enough for the beef head.
Build a fire in the hole and let it burn down to coals.
Place the beef head in the hole, neck side down.
Cover the head with green grass, coals, and earth.
Build a fire over the covered head and keep it burning for about six hours.
Unearth the head and remove the skin.
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.
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Beef + grasstop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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