Name: To Roast a Sirloin of Beef with the Inside Minced
Ingredients: 1 Sirloin of Beef; Salt; Pepper; 1 Shallot, finely chopped; Bread crumbs; Horseradish, scraped; Butter; Gravy

Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Roast a Sirloin of Beef with the Inside Minced

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
Roast the beef until three-quarters done.
Remove the meat from the underside and mince it finely.
Season the minced meat with salt, pepper, and chopped shallot.
Heat the minced meat with just enough gravy to moisten it.
Place the beef with the upper side down, fill it with the minced mixture, and sprinkle with prepared bread crumbs.
Use a salamander or broiler to brown the crumbs until golden.
Serve the beef with scraped horseradish around it.

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.

Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together376 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,646 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,898 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the horseradish

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

Chivefits better
Leekfits better
Capsicumfits better
Horseradishthe original

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