Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,451 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓
A Dark Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the stock
Take a shin of beef, put it on to boil in six quarts of water; boil it six or eight hours; strain it into an earthen vessel.
The next day skim off the fat.
Make the soup
Cut up an onion finely, put it into a saucepan with a small bit of butter, stir it round, fry the onion, dredge in a little flour, let it get brown, but not burned.
Take it from the fire, add a little salt, pepper, a pinch of cloves, and six whole cloves, turn in a quart of the stock.
Cut a little celery, carrot, and turnip, if you like, a little soy; boil it one hour.
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. See the original page.
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.
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Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together17,451 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Beef shin (in the method)
- Gives the stock its meaty flavor and body during long simmering.
- Flour (in the method)
- Browns with the onion and thickens the soup slightly.
- Butter (in the method)
- Fat for frying the onion, carrying flavor and aiding browning.
- Onion (in the method)
- Frying softens it and builds sweet, savory depth in the base.
The step that matters
Browning the onion and flour. Frying until golden without burning builds roasted flavor; burnt flour turns bitter and cannot be fixed once it is past brown.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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