Name: To Dress the Inside of a Cold Sirloin of Beef
Ingredients: beef (cut from a cold sirloin); flour; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; anchovy; shallot; vinegar; crimped parsley (for garnish)

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Dress the Inside of a Cold Sirloin of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the beef and a little fat into pieces as thick as your finger and two inches long.
Dredge the pieces in flour.
Fry the beef in butter until nicely browned.
Drain the butter from the meat and toss it in a rich gravy seasoned with pepper, coarse sea salt, anchovy, and shallot.
Do not let the mixture boil.
Before serving, add two tablespoons of vinegar.
Garnish with crimped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,081 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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 shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, butter, pepper, anchovy, vinegar, parsley):

Shallotthe original
Chivefits about as well
Capsicumfits less well
Potatofits less well

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