Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Spanish Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Toast the slices of bread and place them in a soup tureen.
Layer the cooked sheep's liver, broken into small pieces, with grated cheese, cinnamon, and chopped parsley between the bread.
Roast the nuts in the oven, then pound them.
Stew the pounded nuts in broth, thin it with more broth, and pour the soup into the tureen.
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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Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,130 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cinnamon + parsleytop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together603 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Cinnamon + nutstop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together487 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,588 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Bread + livertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together731 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the nuts
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, liver, cheese, cinnamon, parsley):
- Walnutfits better
- Beansfits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, liver, cheese, cinnamon, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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