Name: Boiled Beef with Verjuice
Ingredients: unripe grapes or prepared verjuice; coarse sea salt; pepper; parsley; chopped scallion; cold beef

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Beef with Verjuice

Ingredients

Directions

Rush some unripe grapes or use prepared verjuice.
Put it in a gravy dish with salt, pepper, parsley, and chopped scallion.
Serve with cold beef on a platter garnished with parsley.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Grape + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,909 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + beeftop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,866 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Grape + parsleytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together536 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).