Skip to main content

Beef Stew with Cheesy Croutons

Classic Stew great for cold winter evenings

Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Onion + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,506 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Olive + red winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Olive + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together26,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, olive, butter, onion, garlic, sugar, red wine):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Rosemarybetter flavor fit
  3. Gingerbetter flavor fit
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, olive, butter, onion, garlic, sugar, red wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).