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Beef Goulash

A hearty stew of diced steak, salt pork, onions, carrots, tomatoes, and spices simmered slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Goulash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the salt pork in a pan until crisp.

  2. Roll the diced steak in flour and fry in the salt pork fat.

Simmer and finish

  1. Transfer the steak to a kettle and cover with boiling water.

  2. Add the bay leaf and green pepper, then boil slowly for 2½ hours.

  3. One hour before serving, add onions, carrots, and tomatoes, and thicken if necessary.

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.

  1. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Round steak
Long simmering breaks down the lean meat into tender, pull-apart pieces.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat browns the flour-coated steak and adds savory richness.
Flour
Coats the steak so it browns and later helps thicken the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the braising liquid, building the goulash flavor.
Onions
Sweeten as they cook slowly, adding depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the steak in salt pork fat. Flour-coated meat must brown well in hot fat so it develops roasted, savory flavor before simmering. Crowding the pan or under-heating it steams the meat, leaving the sauce flat and grey.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, flour, pepper, carrot, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

“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.

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