Name: Beef Ragout
Ingredients: ½ pint good stock, slightly thickened; 1 lb cold roast beef, thinly sliced; 12 small button onions; 2 small carrots, sliced or diced; 1 teaspoon capers; 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce; 1 oz beef dripping; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the carrots and onions in the beef dripping until slightly brown.
Add the stock and sliced beef to the pan. Cook slowly for one hour.
Serve with a border of mashed potatoes.

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.

Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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

What each ingredient does

Beef dripping: Fat that browns the carrots and onions and adds savoury flavour.
Roast beef: Cooked meat that softens and absorbs flavour as it simmers in the stock.
Stock: Liquid that moistens the dish and forms the sauce as it cooks.
Button onions: Browned in fat to add sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Carrots: Browned and softened during cooking, adding sweetness to the sauce.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, carrot, sauce, pepper):

Celeryfits better
Parsleyfits better
Cuminfits better
Capersthe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.