Name: Spanish Stew
Ingredients: 6 pieces of meat (not chopped); 3-6 potatoes; 4 onions; ½ can of tomatoes; 3-4 green peppers, chopped; 6 olives; flour (for thickening)

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Spanish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat pieces until they begin to become tender.
Add the potatoes, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, and olives.
Thicken the stew with a little flour.
Let it boil and serve.

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.

Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,458 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 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

Meat: Provides the main savory body of the stew as it cooks until tender.
Potatoes: Add starch and bulk, softening as the stew simmers.
Flour: Thickens the stew's cooking liquid into a heavier sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, potato, tomato, pepper, olive, flour):

Capsicumfits better
Eggplantfits better
Okrafits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, tomato, pepper, olive, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.