Name: Roast Beef with Horseradish
Ingredients: beef roast; horseradish; coarse sea salt; fish; eggs; potatoes; parsnips; butter; pea soup

Why it works: Horseradish and parsnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Beef with Horseradish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Season the beef roast with coarse sea salt.
Roast the beef until cooked to your liking.
Serve with horseradish on the side.
Prepare the fish with egg sauce.
Boil potatoes or parsnips and serve with melted butter.
Make pea soup as a side dish.

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.

Horseradish + parsniptop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Horseradish + potatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + parsniptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together353 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, horseradish, fish, egg, potato, butter):

Chivefits better
Mustardfits better
Asparagusfits better
Parsnipthe original

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