Name: Stew
Ingredients: meat; coarse sea salt; pepper; cow-heel; carrots; small onions; butter; pounded white sugar; stock

Why it works: Pepper and carrot 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 ↓

Stew

Ingredients

Directions

In a stewpan, add the meat and cover with water.
Bring to a boil, stirring and skimming off any scum.
Cover the pan and reduce heat to simmer for 3 hours.
Skim occasionally and season with salt and pepper before serving.
Transfer the meat to a dish and pour gravy over it, garnishing with cow-heel and carrots.
For the onions, cut off the ends and blanch in boiling water for 20 minutes.
Drain, cool, and remove the outer skins.
In a small saucepan, melt butter and add sugar, salt, pepper, and enough stock to cover the onions.
Boil gently until the onions are tender.
Reduce the gravy quickly until it becomes a glaze, then coat the onions in it, basting every 10 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Pepper + carrottop 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).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 (meat, pepper, carrot, butter, sugar):

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

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