Name: Beefsteak Rolls
Ingredients: 1 inch thick round steak; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Chopped fresh celery or celery salt; ½ inch thick slices of soft bread; Butter for spreading; Powdered cloves; Flour for coating; Hot water

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beefsteak Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Remove all gristle from the round steak and lay it flat on a table.
Sprinkle the steak with a light seasoning of salt, pepper, and chopped celery or celery salt.
Butter the slices of bread and lay them on the steak, then sprinkle a little powdered cloves on top.
Roll the bread and steak together and secure with string.
Coat the rolls with flour seasoned with salt and pepper.
Place the rolls in a saucepan with enough hot water to prevent burning and brown them.
Cover the rolls with hot water, season lightly with salt and pepper, and stew gently until the meat is tender.
Once done, remove the strings and serve the rolls on a dish with gravy poured over them.

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.

Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,668 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, celery, bread, butter, flour):

Parsleyfits better
Sagefits better
Marjoramfits better
Clovethe original

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