Name: Tortellini Primavera
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 15 min
Yield: 6
Ingredients: 2 Tablespoons Butter; 1 whole Medium Onion, Finely Diced; 3 cloves Garlic, Minced; 3 whole Carrots, Peeled And Diced; 1 cup Cauliflower, Broken Into Small Pieces; ¼ cups White Wine; ¼ cups Chicken Broth; ⅓ cups Heavy Cream; ½ cups Grated Parmesan Cheese; 8 whole Salt And Pepper, to taste; ¾ cups Basil Leaves, Chopped (or Chiffonade); 1 cup Cooked Ham, Diced; 1 pound Frozen Peas

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Garlic + cauliflowertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together124 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Garlic + chickentop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,850 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, garlic, carrot, cauliflower, white wine, chicken):

Thymefits better
Parsleyfits better
Celeryfits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, garlic, carrot, cauliflower, white wine, chicken. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Pork	100g cooked	242
Chicken	100g cooked	165
Parmesan Cheese	1 oz (28g)	110
Butter	1 tbsp (14g)	102
Pea	1/2 cup (72g)	62
Broccoli	1 cup chopped (156g)	55
Cream	1 tbsp (15ml) heavy	51
Onion	1 medium (110g)	44
Carrot	1 medium (61g)	25
Wine	2 tbsp cooking wine (30ml)	25
Black Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Garlic	1 clove (3g)	4
Basil	5 leaves fresh (2.5g)	1
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

Tortellini Primavera