Name: Beef Soup
Ingredients: 1 shin of beef; corn (as desired); tomatoes (as desired); potatoes (as desired); pearl barley, vermicelli, or dumplings (as desired); salt (to taste); pepper (to taste); catsup (to taste)

Why it works: Corn and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beef Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Put the shin of beef in a pot early in the morning.
One hour before dinner, add the vegetables: corn, tomatoes, and potatoes.
Half an hour before dinner, add pearl barley, vermicelli, or dumplings.
Season with salt, pepper, and catsup to taste.

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.

Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together938 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Corn + barleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together128 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,099 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin: Gives the broth its rich, meaty flavour as it simmers slowly for hours.
Potatoes: Add starch and body, thickening the broth slightly as they soften.
Pearl barley: Adds chewy texture and some thickening as it cooks in the broth.

Swap the tomato

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

Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, corn, potato, barley, pepper. 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.