Name: Crayfish Bisque
Ingredients: 8 dozen large crayfish; 1 gallon water; 1 large onion; 1 carrot; 1 bunch celery; 1 sprig thyme; 1 bay leaf; 3 sprigs parsley; 6 cloves

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Crayfish Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the crayfish thoroughly to remove dust and sand.
Boil the crayfish in 1 gallon of water.
Remove the crayfish from the water and save the water.
Select 2 dozen of the largest crayfish, remove the meat from the tails, and save the heads after cleaning them.
Set the meat aside with the shells and pick the meat from the remaining crayfish, saving all the shells.

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,108 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 (crayfish, carrot, celery, thyme, parsley, clove):

Parsnipfits better
Turnipfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, carrot, celery, thyme, parsley, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.