Name: French Stew
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon butter; 1 small onion, sliced; 1 carrot, cut into fancy shapes; 1 turnip, cut into fancy shapes; Gravy from roast meat; Cold roast meat, sliced; French canned peas (optional)

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

Cook the carrot and turnip in water until tender.

Make the stew

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.
Add the sliced onion and brown it in the butter.
Add the leftover gravy from the roast to the skillet and cook for a few minutes, then strain it.
Add the sliced cold roast meat to the gravy and cook for 10 to 15 minutes.
Stir in the cooked carrot and turnip.
Optionally, add French canned peas.

Serve

Pour the stew onto a platter and serve.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,994 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Turnip + peastop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,350 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds richness and helps the onion brown in the skillet.
Onion: Browning in butter adds sweetness and savory depth to the stew.
Roast meat gravy: Supplies the main liquid and flavor that coats the meat and vegetables.
Cold roast meat: Forms the substantial protein base of the stew, rewarmed in the gravy.
Carrot: Adds sweetness and a tender texture to the finished stew.
Turnip: Adds mild sweetness and a tender, firm bite to the stew.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, carrot, turnip, meat):

Beansfits better
Lentilsfits better
Chestnutfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, carrot, turnip, meat. 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.