Name: Saddleback of Venison
Ingredients: saddleback of venison; good veal or beef gravy; currant jelly; young green French beans; cauliflower or young broccoli; tomatoes; salt; pepper

Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Saddleback of Venison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the saddleback of venison for cooking.
Heat good veal or beef gravy in a sauciere over a spirit-lamp.
Serve the venison slices with the hot gravy poured over them.
Accompany with currant jelly that is not too sweet or firm.
Serve very young and green French beans, well dried and hot, or substitute with cauliflower or young broccoli if necessary.
For tomatoes, cut them across, extract the juice, season with salt and pepper, and grill them over a sharp fire.

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.

Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,713 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,113 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cauliflower + tomatotop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together91 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, veal, beans, cauliflower, tomato, pepper):

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Cherryfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, veal, beans, cauliflower, tomato, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.