Name: Shoulder Steak
Ingredients: 1 shoulder steak; flour for dusting; coarse sea salt; black pepper; carrots, cut into cubes; turnips, cut into cubes; potatoes, cut into cubes; peas; small onions

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shoulder Steak

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Pound the shoulder steak with flour and sear it well.
Simmer the steak until half done.
Remove the meat from the kettle.
Layer vegetables in the kettle, then add the meat, followed by more vegetables.
Cook until the meat is tender.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper before serving.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 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 peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, carrot, turnip, potato, onion):

Lentilsfits better
Beansfits better
Chickpeafits better
Peasthe original

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