Name: Soup
Ingredients: water; mutton; chives; carrots

Why it works: Chive and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 419 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soup

Ingredients

water
mutton
chives
carrots

Directions

Cut the mutton into pieces.
Place the mutton in a pot with water.
Add chopped chives and carrots.
Simmer until the flavors are extracted.

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.

Chive + carrottop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together419 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mutton + carrottop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,878 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + chivetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).