Name: Beef Sandwiches
Ingredients: butter; olives; 1 carrot; 1 onion; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 cups stock; coarse sea salt; black pepper; mashed potatoes

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the butter in a stewpan.
Fry the olives until lightly browned, then remove them.
Add the chopped carrot and onion, and fry for 3-4 minutes.
Sprinkle in the flour and fry until brown.
Pour in the stock and stir until boiling.
Return the olives to the stewpan, add salt and pepper.
Cover with greased paper and the lid, then simmer slowly for 1.5 hours.
Remove the strings from the olives, serve on a bed of mashed potatoes, and strain the sauce over them.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,458 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, olive, carrot, flour, pepper, potato):

Capsicumfits better
Parsnipfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

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