Name: A Very Cheap Soup
Ingredients: 1 pound lean meat trimmings, cut into small pieces; 3 onions, chopped; 2 turnips, chopped; 2 leeks, chopped; 5-6 sticks of celery, chopped; ½ pound pearl barley or rice, washed and drained; 2 ounces dripping or bacon fat; 1 teaspoon coarse sugar

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Very Cheap Soup

Ingredients

1 pound lean meat trimmings, cut into small pieces
3 onions, chopped
2 turnips, chopped
2 leeks, chopped
5-6 sticks of celery, chopped
½ pound pearl barley or rice, washed and drained
2 ounces dripping or bacon fat
1 teaspoon coarse sugar

Directions

Melt the dripping or bacon fat in an iron saucepan.
Add the meat and sprinkle with sugar, stirring briskly with an iron spoon.
Add the chopped vegetables and stir again.

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 + leektop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,046 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together142 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together629 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,093 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, leek, celery, barley, sugar):

Parsnipfits better
Carrotfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, turnip, leek, celery, barley, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.