Name: Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: 1 small shank of beef; 4 quarts water; 1 pint finely chopped vegetables (equal portions of carrot, turnip, potato, and celery); 1 slice onion; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste

Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

1 small shank of beef
4 quarts water
1 pint finely chopped vegetables (equal portions of carrot, turnip, potato, and celery)
1 slice onion
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste

Directions

Make the broth

Boil the beef in water for three hours.
Strain the broth and return it to the pot.

Finish the soup

Add the chopped vegetables, onion, and parsley.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 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).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

Beef shank: Long simmering releases flavor and gelatin into the water, forming the body of the broth.
Carrot, turnip, potato, and celery: Vegetables add sweetness, texture, and body as they soften in the hot broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, potato, celery, parsley, pepper):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, potato, celery, parsley, pepper. 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.