Name: Stewed Beef-steak
Ingredients: 1 beef steak; 2 tablespoons butter; ½ cup water; 1 onion, sliced; 1 tablespoon walnut ketchup; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 2 teaspoons flour

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Beef-steak

Ingredients

Directions

Heat a stewpan over low heat and add the steak with butter.
Cook until the butter turns into a white gravy, then pour it into a basin.
Add more butter to the steak and cook until done.
Return the gravy to the stewpan and fry the steak.
Add the steak to the gravy with wine and sliced onion, and stew for 10 minutes.
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.

Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the walnut

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

Beansfits better
Sesamefits about as well
Chestnutfits about as well
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, onion, ketchup, pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.