Name: Beef Collops
Ingredients: ½ pound beef (sirloin or rump); fine herbs; basil; coulis; ½ Seville orange; 1 teaspoon sugar; ½ pound truffles

Why it works: Basil and orange work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 265 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Beef Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the beef into collops, flatten them, and place them in a pan.
Sprinkle the pan with fine herbs and a little basil.

Make the sauce

In a separate pot, heat the coulis.
Add the collops to the coulis, scraping the herbs from the pan into the pot.
Squeeze the juice of the Seville orange into the pot and add sugar.

Finish

Slice the truffles and add them to the collops.

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.

Basil + orangetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together265 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Beef + truffletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together412 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).
Beef + basiltop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together915 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Beef + orangetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together960 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

What each ingredient does

Beef: Provides the meat that is cooked tender in the sauce.
Truffles: Add a strong earthy aroma to the finished dish.
Coulis: Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the dish.
Seville orange: Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the sweetness.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the orange juice.