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Caldo Verde – a Traditional Portuguese Soup

Across from a row of rough board stands selling vegetables, fruits and local crafts is Number 59 Avenue de la Justice in the city of Kinshasa. A plain, white storefront with a small sign at the side of the front door: Alimentation la Baviere. Baviere is a little Portuguese-run grocery store. During the years of my weekly shopping trips there, the makings for this traditional Portuguese soup were always on the shelves.

By tastykitchen · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 6
Prep30 min
Cook40 min

Ingredients

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the chorizo rounds and quartered pieces and cook for 4 minutes, stirring, until the edges crisp and the fat renders.

  2. Add the diced yellow onion and cook for 6 minutes, stirring, until softened. Add the sliced garlic and cook for 1 minute more.

  3. Add the diced potato and the chicken or vegetable bouillon. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for 15 minutes until the potato is very tender.

  4. Mash some of the potato against the side of the pot with a spoon for about 2 minutes to thicken the soup slightly.

  5. Stir in the thinly sliced greens and simmer uncovered for 8 minutes until the greens are tender.

  6. Simmer for 2 minutes more to heat the chorizo through completely, then taste the soup and serve hot.

By tastykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Onion + potatotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Olive + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,512 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Potato + chickentop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, onion, garlic, potato, chicken):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Broccolibetter flavor fit
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, onion, garlic, potato, chicken. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).