Name: Stewing, Hashing, and Mincing
Ingredients: 2 cups veal stock; 2 tablespoons chopped shallots; 2 anchovies; 1 tablespoon grated horseradish; 2 slices lemon peel; ⅓ cup port wine; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewing, Hashing, and Mincing

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, combine veal stock, shallots, anchovies, horseradish, lemon peel, and cayenne pepper.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes, then strain the liquid.
Add fish to the strained liquid and stew until tender.
Stir in port wine towards the end of cooking.
Serve in a deep dish with the cooking liquid and fried bread around it.

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.

Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together376 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,523 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, shallot, lemon, port wine, pepper):

Leekfits better
Capsicumfits better
Chivefits better
Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, shallot, lemon, port wine, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.