Name: Roast Beef
Ingredients: 1 thick beef roast; coarse sea salt; black pepper; flour; boiling water; parsley; carrot tops; celery sprigs; brown gravy

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Sear each side of the roast in a hot pan.
Rub the roast with salt and pepper, then dredge with flour.
Place the roast in a roasting pan.
Pour enough boiling water into the pan to prevent burning.
Ensure the roast does not dry out while cooking.
Once done, let it brown on both sides.
Garnish with parsley, carrot tops, or celery sprigs.
Serve with brown gravy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

Swap the celery

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

Marjoramfits about as well
Celerythe original
Thymefits about as well
Dillfits about as well

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