Name: Spanish Stew
Ingredients: ½ pint cold roast beef, chopped; 3 medium onions, sliced; 2 medium Irish potatoes, sliced; 8 medium tomatoes, sliced; 1 teaspoon red pepper; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon butter; water

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

Chop the cold roast beef to make ½ pint.
Put the beef in a pot with enough water to cover.
Add the sliced onions, potatoes, tomatoes, red pepper, salt, and butter.
Boil for 45 minutes.

Serve

Serve hot.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,448 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

Cold roast beef: Provides the main meat and body of the stew.
Potatoes: Soften during boiling and thicken the stew as their starch releases.
Tomatoes: Break down into the stew and add moisture and acidity to the liquid.
Onions: Soften and add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the finished stew.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, potato, pepper, butter):

Chivefits better
Carrotfits about as well
Tomatothe original
Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, potato, pepper, butter. 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.