Name: Stewed Beep with Mushrooms
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons flour; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 teaspoon mace; ½ teaspoon cloves; ½ teaspoon allspice; enough cold water to cover the meat; ½ cup mushroom ketchup; ⅓ cup claret

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Beep with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

In a porcelain kettle, dredge the meat with flour and season with pepper, salt, mace, cloves, and allspice.
Add enough cold water to cover the meat and stew slowly for three hours, keeping it covered to retain steam.
After three hours, add mushroom ketchup and claret, and let it simmer for an additional 30 minutes.
Serve with plenty of gravy.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, clove, allspice, meat, mushroom, ketchup):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, clove, allspice, meat, mushroom, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.