Name: Beef, Hung
Ingredients: 1 oz butter; 1 onion, sliced; 1 turnip, chopped; 1 carrot, chopped; 1 tablespoon ground rice; 1 tablespoon flour; 1 tin of beef; Harvey's sauce to taste; Beans for serving

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef, Hung

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, melt the butter and fry the sliced onion until browned.
Add the chopped turnip and carrot, mixing well.
Combine the stock with the ground rice and flour, then add to the saucepan.
Stir in Harvey's sauce and simmer for 30 minutes.
Cut the beef into neat squares, roll in flour, and add to the sauce.
Simmer for an additional 5 minutes.
Serve the meat and gravy in the center with beans arranged around.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 (butter, turnip, carrot, rice, flour, beef, sauce):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

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