Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Beef Olives
Ingredients
Directions
Flatten slices of beef and season with salt and pepper.
Spread a mixture of chopped onion, garlic, and herbs on each slice.
Roll the beef slices tightly and secure with toothpicks or kitchen twine.
Heat olive oil in a pan and brown the beef rolls on all sides.
Add water or broth, cover, and simmer until cooked through.
Serve hot.
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.
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Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together29,058 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together25,665 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,092 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,090 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,779 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, olive, garlic):
- Tomatofits better
- Onionthe original
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Spinachfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, olive, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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