Name: Rice Soup
Ingredients: 1 cup boiled rice; 1 quart soup stock or canned consomme; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; parsley or other seasonings to taste

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice Soup

Ingredients

1 cup boiled rice
1 quart soup stock or canned consomme
pepper to taste
coarse sea salt to taste
parsley or other seasonings to taste

Directions

Add the boiled rice to the heated soup stock or consomme.
Stir until it comes to a boil.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, or any other seasonings you prefer.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,762 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled rice: Adds body and a soft, filling texture as it sits in the hot broth.
Soup stock or consomme: Forms the liquid base and carries the flavor of the whole soup.