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Beef and Rice

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the raw beef and rice in a bowl.

  2. Add the pepper and salt, and combine well.

  3. Boil salted water in a pot and cook the cabbage for 5 minutes until the leaves are pliable.

  4. Carefully remove the leaves from the cabbage head.

  5. Form croquettes with the beef and rice mixture and wrap each in a cabbage leaf.

  6. Arrange the wrapped croquettes in a baking dish.

  7. Pour enough tomatoes over the croquettes to cover them.

  8. If the tomatoes thicken while cooking, dilute with stock or water.

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.

  1. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, pepper, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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

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