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Hungarian Goulash

A stew of beef or mutton, onions, green pepper, potatoes, and paprika simmered in bacon grease and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hungarian Goulash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove tough portions of the meat and cut it into walnut-sized cubes.

Cook

  1. In a skillet, heat bacon grease with chopped onion and green pepper for 10 minutes, covered.

  2. Add the meat to the skillet and brown it for at least 15 minutes, uncovered.

  3. Once browned, add boiling water and diced potatoes to the skillet.

  4. Cover and cook until the potatoes are tender but not too soft.

  5. Stir in the milk, salt, paprika, and peppers.

  6. Serve hot.

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.

  1. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
Provides the main body of the stew; browning it builds savory flavor and a richer color.
Bacon grease
Carries the flavor of the onion and pepper and adds fat for browning the meat.
Potatoes
Absorb the cooking liquid and thicken the stew as their starch softens.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mellow sweetness that softens the paprika's sharpness.
Onion
Releases sweetness as it cooks slowly, forming the base flavor of the stew.

The step that matters

Browning the meat. Meat that is crowded, wet, or under-browned steams instead of browning. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds the deep savory flavor the goulash depends on.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, pepper, potato, milk. 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.

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