Why it works: Turnip and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Stewed Brisket
Ingredients
Directions
Place the brisket with hard fat in a stew pot and add enough water to cover it.
Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.
Add chopped carrots, onions, turnips, celery, and a few whole peppercorns.
Stew until the meat is very tender.
Remove the bones and discard the fat from the soup.
Serve the stew in a dish, cutting the vegetables into small pieces.
For added flavor, stir in a spoonful of catsup and some capers or chopped pickled walnuts.
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.
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Turnip + caperstop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together145 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7,585 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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 (carrot, turnip, celery, capers):
- Parsnipfits better
- Leekfits better
- Beetrootfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
More stewed brisket recipes
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