Name: Rice Soup
Ingredients: 1 large fowl; 2 pounds neck or shoulder of mutton; sufficient water; 1 grated carrot; a handful of young shallots, chopped; 2 ounces rice; 1 cup minced parsley; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt 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 ↓

Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the fowl and mutton until the blood is well soaked out.

Simmer

Boil slowly in sufficient water for 1.5 hours.
Add the grated carrot and chopped shallots.
Add the rice and simmer for another 30 minutes.
Stir in the minced parsley and season with pepper and salt.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,477 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

Rice: Thickens the broth as its starch releases during simmering and adds body to the soup.
Fowl: Builds the rich, savory flavor of the broth as it cooks slowly in water.
Mutton: Adds deep meaty flavor and richness to the broth during long, slow simmering.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, rice, parsley, pepper):

Turnipfits better
Parsnipfits better
Capsicumfits better
Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, rice, 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.