Name: On Roasting
Ingredients: beef; butter; mutton; veal; lamb; greased paper; quails; grape vine leaves; thin pork

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

On Roasting

Ingredients

Directions

Place beef near the fire until a crust forms all around.
Baste the beef with a little butter.
Once the crust is formed, move the beef further from the fire gradually.
Baste and turn the beef often.
For mutton, follow the same method.
For veal and lamb, keep them further from the fire to prevent burning.
If using very young lamb, wrap it in greased paper and baste over the paper.
For roasting birds, wrap them in paper and remove the paper 10-15 minutes before finishing to brown them.
To roast quails, roll them up and tie in grape vine leaves, then place slices of thin pork over the leaves and tie again.
Put the quails in the oven and serve them as they are when done.

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 + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Lamb + quailtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together28 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together896 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Quail + porktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together308 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lamb + porktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together623 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, mutton, veal, lamb, quail, pork):

Grapethe original
Coconutfits about as well
Lemonfits about as well
Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, mutton, veal, lamb, quail, pork. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.