Name: Oyster Soup
Ingredients: Bread; Butter; Boiled Tongue; Tomato Sauce; Spinach; Boiled Potatoes; Ice Cream; Cake; Tea or Cocoa

Why it works: Spinach and potato work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 646 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Serve bread and butter alongside the soup.
Prepare boiled tongue and serve with tomato sauce.
Cook spinach and serve as a side dish.
Boil potatoes until tender and serve.
Offer ice cream and cake for dessert.
Brew tea or prepare cocoa as beverages.

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.

Spinach + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together646 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + spinachtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,350 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, tomato, sauce, potato, cream, tea):

Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits about as well
Onionfits about as well
Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, tomato, sauce, potato, cream, tea. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.