Skip to main content

Beef, Chestnut & Red Wine Casserole

Chestnuts really make this stew special, perfect on a winter's day - but good enough to make all year

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and red wine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,017 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 2

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, tree nuts (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. Beef + red winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,017 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Beef + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Thyme + red winetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together749 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21,599 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, thyme, chestnut, carrot, red wine):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, thyme, chestnut, carrot, 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).