Name: Brisket of Beef Stewed, and High Sauce
Ingredients: Brisket of beef; Water; Onions; Carrots; Celery; Coarse sea salt; Pepper; High sauce ingredients (as per your preference)

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Brisket of Beef Stewed, and High Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Place the brisket in a pot and cover with water.
Add chopped onions, carrots, and celery.
Season with coarse sea salt and pepper.
Simmer until the beef is tender.
Prepare high sauce separately according to your preference.
Serve the stewed brisket with the high sauce.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, celery, pepper, sauce):

Capsicumfits better
Tomatofits better
Turnipfits better
Onionthe original

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