Name: Spiced Beef
Ingredients: 2 pounds fresh beef, chopped; 2 slices bread, toasted or plain; 1½ cups milk; 2 slices fat salt pork, finely chopped; 3 teaspoons coarse sea salt; 3 teaspoons Bell's Spiced Seasoning; butter, for topping

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Spiced Beef

Ingredients

2 pounds fresh beef, chopped
2 slices bread, toasted or plain
1½ cups milk
2 slices fat salt pork, finely chopped
3 teaspoons coarse sea salt
3 teaspoons Bell's Spiced Seasoning
butter, for topping

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Soak the bread in the milk until soft.
Combine the soaked bread with the chopped beef.
Add the chopped salt pork, salt, and Bell's Spiced Seasoning to the beef mixture.

Bake

Place the mixture in a buttered pan.
Cut butter into small pieces and distribute over the top.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1½ hours.

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.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh beef: Forms the main body of the dish and sets firm as it bakes.
Bread: Soaked in milk, it holds moisture and keeps the beef mixture tender.
Milk: Softens the bread and adds moisture to the mixture during baking.
Fat salt pork: Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and carries flavour through the bake.
Butter: Melts over the top, adding richness and encouraging browning.

“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.