Name: Beef Collops
Ingredients: ½ pound beef (sirloin or rump); fine herbs; basil; coulis; 1 Seville orange; 2 teaspoons sugar; ½ pound truffles (sliced)

Why it works: Basil and orange work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 265 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Beef Collops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the beef into collops, flatten them, and place them in a pan.
Sprinkle the pan with fine herbs and basil.

Make the sauce and serve

Heat the coulis in a separate pan and add the collops.
Scrape the herbs from the first pan into the coulis.
Squeeze the Seville orange into the mixture and add sugar.
Add the sliced truffles to the collops before serving.

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.

Basil + orangetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together265 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Beef + truffletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together412 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).
Beef + basiltop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together915 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Beef + orangetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together960 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

What each ingredient does

Beef: Provides the main body of the dish, cooked quickly by the hot coulis.
Truffles: Add a strong earthy aroma that rounds out the dish.
Seville orange: Adds bright acidity that balances the richness of the sauce.
Sugar: Sweetens the sauce and offsets the sharpness of the orange juice.