Name: Camp Soup
Ingredients: ½ pound salt pork; 2 ounces rice; 2½ pints cold water; 6 ounces biscuit; 1 teaspoon sugar; ¼ teaspoon pepper; Optional: 4 ounces of vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, turnips, leeks, greens, cabbage, or potatoes)

Why it works: Biscuit and onion work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 428 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Camp Soup

Ingredients

½ pound salt pork
2 ounces rice
2½ pints cold water
6 ounces biscuit
1 teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon pepper
Optional: 4 ounces of vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, turnips, leeks, greens, cabbage, or potatoes)

Directions

In a saucepan, combine the salt pork, rice, and cold water.
If using vegetables, wash or peel them and add to the pot with the meat before boiling.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
Break the biscuit into pieces and add to the pot; let soak for 10 minutes.
Stir in the sugar and pepper before serving.

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.

Biscuit + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together428 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Rice + biscuittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together109 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + ricetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,137 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork: Adds fat and savory meaty flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Rice: Absorbs liquid and thickens the soup as it cooks.
Biscuit: Soaks up broth and adds body, thickening the soup as it sits.
Sugar: Balances the saltiness of the pork and rounds out the flavor.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, rice, biscuit, sugar, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Potatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, rice, biscuit, sugar, 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.