Name: Beef Paprika
Ingredients: 2 lbs beef; 1 teaspoon paprika; 1 large white onion; ½ cup thick gravy; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Paprika

Ingredients

Directions

Season and mix

Thoroughly salt the beef.
Add paprika to the beef.
Chop the onion finely and mix it with the beef.
Add the thick gravy and combine well.

Cook

Place the mixture in a bag and cook for one hour.

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.

Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 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

What each ingredient does

Beef: Forms the main bulk of the dish as the protein that sets when cooked.
Paprika: Adds mild sweet pepper flavor and a red color to the meat.
White onion: Adds moisture and mild sweetness as it softens during cooking.
Thick gravy: Adds moisture and savory flavor to help keep the meat from drying out.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.