Name: Veal Soup
Ingredients: 1 pound veal; ⅔ cup rice; sweet herbs or celery to taste; salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Soup

Ingredients

1 pound veal
⅔ cup rice
sweet herbs or celery to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Boil the veal in a pot of water until tender.
Add the rice and cook until the rice is soft.
Stir in sweet herbs or celery and season with salt and pepper.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,169 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Veal + celerytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,336 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 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

Veal: Provides the main meat and savory flavor as it cooks into the broth.
Rice: Thickens the broth slightly and adds body as its starch softens during cooking.