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Watercress Soup with Garlic Croûtons and Soft Pickled Quails’ Eggs

Take your watercress soup to new heights by topping it with croûtons and watercress oil, revealing pickled quails’ eggs and chopped apple below.

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Why it works: Watercress and garlic work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 263 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 6
Cook1 hr

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcfood. 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. Watercress + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Fennel + coriandertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Coriander + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. White wine + fenneltop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Fennel + watercresstop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, white wine, vinegar, fennel, coriander, quail, egg):

  1. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  2. Dillbetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, vinegar, fennel, coriander, quail, egg. 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).