Name: Beef Steak
Ingredients: beef steak; lettuce leaves; lemon slices

Why it works: Lettuce and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Beef Steak

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

beef steak
lettuce leaves
lemon slices

Directions

Broil the beef steak and season it as desired.
Place lettuce leaves on a serving dish.
Put the broiled steak on top of the lettuce.
Top the steak with thin slices of lemon.

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.

Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Beef + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together662 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,278 recipes

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