Name: Beef Rolls or Olives
Ingredients: 1½ lbs rump steak; veal forcemeat; ½ pint stock or water; 2 oz butter; 1 oz flour; 1 small onion, sliced; a few slices of carrot; salt and pepper

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Rolls or Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Remove all fat from the meat and cut it into very thin slices, about 4 inches long and 2 inches wide.
Flatten the slices with a wet rolling pin.
Spread a little forcemeat on each slice of meat.
Roll up the slices lightly.

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 + 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).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,029 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 (veal, butter, flour, carrot, pepper):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Turnipfits better
Onionthe original

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