Name: Stewed Beef Steaks
Ingredients: 3 cups water; 1 bunch sweet herbs; 2 blades mace; 1 onion, studded with 3 cloves; 1 anchovy; 2 tablespoons butter, soaked in flour; ⅓ cup sherry or Madeira; fresh butter for frying

Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Stewed Beef Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, combine water, sweet herbs, mace, onion, anchovy, and butter soaked in flour.
Cover and stew the steaks until tender, but not overly soft.
Transfer the steaks to a hot frying pan with enough fresh butter to cover them.
Fry the steaks until browned, then pour off the fat.
Add the stewing gravy to the pan and heat until rich and thick.
Place the steaks on a hot dish and pour the sauce over them.

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.

Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,901 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,237 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, anchovy, butter, flour, sherry):

Thymefits better
Capersfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, anchovy, butter, flour, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.