Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
Stock Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Strain the stock through a tin strainer.
Cut the onions into rings and boil them in the stock for 1 hour.
Thicken and serve
Mix the cornflour with a little cooled soup until smooth.
Stir the cornflour mixture into the soup.
Add pepper and coarse sea salt to taste, then serve.
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.
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Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together68,474 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Onions
- Soften during long boiling and add sweetness and savoury flavour to the stock.
- Cornflour
- Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving it body.
The step that matters
Mixing the cornflour into the soup. Cornflour clumps if added directly to hot liquid. Mixing it first with a little cooled soup until smooth lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens without lumps.
“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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