Name: Roast Beef, or Veal
Ingredients: beef or veal; curled celery or celery tops; lemon; beets; pickled carrots; any green

Why it works: Celery and carrot 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 ↓

Roast Beef, or Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roast beef or veal as desired.
Arrange curled celery or celery tops on a serving platter.
Slice lemon and beets, and arrange them on the platter.
Add pickled carrots, either alone or alternating with any green.

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.

Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + carrottop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,351 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,370 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).