Name: Soups and Broths
Ingredients: bones and scraps of meat; vegetables; stale bread; seasoning

Why it works: Meat and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soups and Broths

Ingredients

bones and scraps of meat
vegetables
stale bread
seasoning

Directions

Prepare

Gather all leftover bones, meat scraps, and vegetables.
Boil the bones to extract juices, then strain into a soup kettle.
Cut off any remaining meat from the bones and add it to the kettle.
Add vegetables and stale bread to the kettle.

Simmer and serve

Stew or boil slowly for 3 to 6 hours.
Cool and store overnight if not using immediately.
Reheat before serving.

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.

Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Bones and scraps of meat: Release gelatin and savory flavor into the broth during long simmering.
Vegetables: Add aromatic flavor and sweetness to the broth as they cook down.
Stale bread: Thickens the soup slightly as it softens and absorbs liquid.

“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.