Name: Roast Beef
Ingredients: beef roast; tomato sauce; horseradish; mustard sauce; cranberry sauce; stuffed peppers

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Season the beef roast with salt and pepper.
Place the roast in a roasting pan and cook until desired doneness.
Serve with tomato sauce, horseradish, mustard sauce, cranberry sauce, and stuffed peppers.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + cranberrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together66 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Horseradish + cranberrytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the cranberry

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

Avocadofits better
Limefits better
Cranberrythe original
Lemonfits about as well

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