Name: The Inside of a Sirloin of Beef Forced
Ingredients: 1 pound of suet; crumbs of bread; a little lemon peel; thyme; pepper; coarse sea salt; ½ nutmeg, grated; 2 shallots, chopped fine; 1 glass of red wine

Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The Inside of a Sirloin of Beef Forced

Ingredients

Directions

Lift up the fat of the inside of the sirloin and cut out the meat close to the bone.
Chop the meat and suet small.
Mix the chopped meat and suet with bread crumbs, lemon peel, thyme, pepper, salt, nutmeg, shallots, and red wine.
Put the mixture back into the sirloin, cover with skin and fat, and skewer it down.
Cover with paper and do not remove until serving.
Before serving, boil ¼ pint of red wine with 2 chopped shallots and pour it over the meat with the gravy.
Garnish with lemon 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.

Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,476 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,907 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, lemon, thyme, pepper, shallot, red wine):

Marjoramfits better
Parsleyfits better
Tarragonfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, lemon, thyme, pepper, shallot, red wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.