Name: Soup Stock and Soup
Ingredients: 1 pound meat and bone (half and half by weight); 1 quart cold water; 1 teaspoon salt; ⅓ teaspoon pepper; optional seasonings (parsley, bay leaf, mixed herbs, spices); 1 tablespoon each of onion, carrot, turnip, and celery (for vegetable flavoring)

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soup Stock and Soup

Ingredients

1 pound meat and bone (half and half by weight)
1 quart cold water
1 teaspoon salt
⅓ teaspoon pepper
optional seasonings (parsley, bay leaf, mixed herbs, spices)
1 tablespoon each of onion, carrot, turnip, and celery (for vegetable flavoring)

Directions

Cut the meat into small pieces and soak in cold water.
For each pound of meat, use 1 quart of water, 1 teaspoon of salt, and ⅓ teaspoon of pepper.
Simmer the mixture in a steamtight kettle until the water turns red.
Add the salt, pepper, and any optional seasonings once the water begins to simmer.
Add 1 tablespoon each of finely chopped onion, carrot, turnip, and celery per quart of water for vegetable flavoring.

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.

Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat and bone: Provides the main flavor and gelatin that gives the stock body as it simmers.
Onion, carrot, turnip, and celery: Add aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the stock as they cook.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, onion, carrot, turnip, celery):

Parsleythe original
Thymefits about as well
Marjoramfits less well
Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, onion, carrot, turnip, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.