Name: Beef Stew with Dumplings
Ingredients: 5 lbs aitchbone; ¼ small onion, cut; 4 cups potatoes, cut in ½ inch slices; 2½ cups turnip, cut in half-inch cubes; ½ cup carrot, cut in slices; ⅓ cup flour; Salt; Pepper

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Stew with Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Wipe the meat, remove from the bone, and cut into 1-inch cubes.
Sprinkle meat with salt and pepper, then dust with flour.
Cut some fat into small pieces and heat in a frying pan.
Add the meat and stir constantly until well browned.
Transfer the meat to a kettle and rinse the frying pan with boiling water to retain flavor.
Add remaining fat and bone pieces, cover with boiling water, and boil for five minutes.
Lower the temperature and cook until the meat is tender.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, turnip, carrot, flour, pepper):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

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