Name: Veal Ragout
Ingredients: 2 lbs neck, breast, or knuckle of veal; ½ oz dripping; ½ oz butter; 1 oz flour; 1 onion, diced; 1 carrot, diced; 1 small turnip, diced; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Carrot and turnip 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 ↓

Veal Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the veal into serving pieces.
Heat the dripping and butter in a stewpan.
Fry the veal until lightly browned, then drain off the fat.
Cover the meat with hot water.
Add the diced vegetables and keep the carrot, turnip, and onion in water.

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 + turniptop 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).
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).
Flour + turniptop 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 (veal, butter, flour, carrot, turnip, pepper):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

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