Name: A LA Minute
Ingredients: 4 ounces fat salt pork; 1 onion, chopped; ½ medium carrot, sliced; 2 pounds lean beef, cut in small dice; 3 pints boiling water; salt to taste

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 5,669 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-ethylphenol, which smells must. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the fat salt pork into dice and place it in a saucepan over heat.
Stir the pork until it turns brown, then add the chopped onion and sliced carrot.
Fry the onion and carrot until they are partly cooked, then add the diced beef.
Stir and fry the beef for 5 minutes.
Pour in the boiling water and add salt to taste.
Boil gently for about 40 minutes, then strain the broth.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together5,669 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).
Onion + beeftop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,091 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together21,599 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + oniontop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together18,199 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + beeftop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together6,604 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

Lean beef: Provides the main meat flavour and body to the broth as it cooks.
Fat salt pork: Renders fat into the pan, giving the base flavour and browning for the soup.
Onion: Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in the rendered fat.

Flavor stand-ins for the carrot

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

Potatobetter flavor fit
Tomatobetter flavor fit
Chiveabout as good a flavor fit
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.