Name: To Hash Beef or Mutton
Ingredients: 1 lump of butter; flour (for rolling); gravy; coarse sea salt; white pepper; 1 shallot or onion; a little parsley; meat (beef or mutton); juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Hash Beef or Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Roll the butter in flour and place it in a stewpan.
Stir until it turns a good brown color.
Add enough gravy to make a sauce for the meat.
Season with salt, white pepper, shallot or onion, and parsley.
Cut the meat into thin pieces and add it to the sauce.
Warm the mixture, then add lemon juice and 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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,523 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,081 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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 white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, shallot, parsley, meat, lemon):

Capersfits better
Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, shallot, parsley, meat, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.