Name: Pot-pie
Ingredients: 2 to 3 pounds beef; potatoes; turnips; 1 head of cabbage; salt; pepper; apple sauce

Why it works: Turnip and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the beef in a large pot until nearly done.
Add chopped potatoes, turnips, and cabbage to the pot.
Cut the cabbage into 8 to 10 pieces.
Season with salt and pepper while cooking.
Serve very hot with apple sauce.

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.

Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Potato + cabbagetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together275 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 apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, turnip, cabbage, pepper, sauce):

Limefits better
Lemonfits better
Avocadofits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, turnip, cabbage, pepper, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.