Name: Italian Noodles
Ingredients: 3 eggs; ½ lb chopped raw beef; 1 chopped onion; ⅓ cup chopped tomato; pepper to taste; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 whole cloves; butter for cooking

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 ↓

Italian Noodles

Ingredients

Directions

Make noodles with 3 eggs.
Shortly before serving, boil the noodles and drain the broth.
In a pan, combine the beef and onion with butter.
Add the tomato, cloves, and seasoning, and boil for about 30 minutes.
If the tomatoes are not juicy, add a little water.

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).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, beef, onion, tomato, pepper, butter):

Garlicfits better
Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Clovethe original

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