Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Braised Beef
Ingredients
Directions
Fry the slices of fat salt pork in a pan until the fat is rendered.
Sear the beef in the hot pork fat, avoiding piercing it with a fork.
Once seared, place the beef on a trivet in a baking pan or earthen crock.
Surround the beef with the chopped carrot, turnip, onion, and celery.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the celery
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, carrot, turnip, onion):
- Celerythe original
- Thymefits about as well
- Marjoramfits about as well
- Parsleyfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, carrot, turnip, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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