Name: Beef Pie
Ingredients: 3 pounds veiny piece of beef (with fat and lean); Salt; Pepper; Mace; Allspice; 2 ounces butter; Forcemeat; Eggs; Gravy (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Beef Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the beef and season it with salt, pepper, mace, and allspice, rubbing them in well.
Place the beef in a stew pot by a slow fire with the butter and let it simmer in its own steam until it begins to shrink.
Once cold, add more seasoning, forcemeat, and eggs.
If in a dish, add gravy before baking; if in crust, add gravy after it cools and sets in jelly.

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.

Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,847 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 mace

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

Nutmegfits better
Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

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