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Beef-Skirts

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cucumber and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 355 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Beef-Skirts

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Braise the beef skirts and stuff them with mushrooms or oysters.

  2. Serve with a ragout of cucumber or over spinach.

  3. Alternatively, serve on fried toasts.

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. Cucumber + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together778 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Oyster + cucumbertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together192 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Mushroom + cucumbertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together667 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mushroom, oyster, spinach):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mushroom, oyster, spinach. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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