Name: Egg Soup
Ingredients: 1 gallon veal broth; salt to taste; pepper to taste; a little spice; 6 hard boiled eggs

Why it works: Veal and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,049 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Egg Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Season the veal broth with salt, pepper, and a little spice.
Just before serving, add the hard boiled eggs cut into squares.
Stir gently and serve hot.

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.

Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,845 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal broth: Forms the liquid base that carries the seasoning and the eggs.
Hard boiled eggs: Add body and substance as the soup's protein, cut into pieces that hold their shape.

“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.