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American Chop Suey II

A baked beef and macaroni dish with onions, tomatoes, celery, salt pork, cracker crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

American Chop Suey II

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.

Make the filling

  1. Fry the salt pork in a pan.

  2. In the fat, fry the onions for five minutes.

  3. Add the ground beef, cooked macaroni, tomatoes, and chopped celery.

Bake

  1. Place cracker crumbs on top and dot with butter.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for thirty minutes.

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.

  1. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 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

What each ingredient does

Ground beef
Provides the meaty body and savory flavor of the dish.
Salt pork
Renders fat for frying the onions and adds savory depth.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that combine into a sauce while baking.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping over the baked dish.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the cracker topping brown richly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, beef, tomato, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Pepperfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, beef, tomato, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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