Name: Tomato Bouillon
Ingredients: 1 cup dried celery; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 cup dried carrots; 1 teaspoon sugar; 3 onions, sliced; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 cup diced turnips; 2 quarts water; 3 quarts tomatoes

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Combine dried celery, salt, dried carrots, sugar, sliced onions, butter, diced turnips, and water in a pot.
Cook the mixture slowly for about 2 hours.
Drain the vegetables.
Add the drained vegetables to the liquid along with the salt, sugar, and butter.
Serve hot.

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.

Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions: Soften and release sweetness and savory flavor into the broth as they cook.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the broth.
Dried carrots: Contribute sweetness and body to the broth as they simmer.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, sugar, onion, butter, turnip):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Beetrootfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, sugar, onion, butter, turnip. 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.