Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Pumpkin Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Chop the vegetables and place them in a pot with the water, except for the cabbage and tomatoes.
Parboil the cabbage and add it after half an hour of boiling.
After another half hour, add the tomatoes and chopped herbs.
Boil sharply for twenty minutes, then add sugar, pepper, and salt.
Rub the soup through a colander, return it to the pot, and stir in the floured butter.
Simmer for five minutes, then serve in a tureen and stir in the hot milk or cream.
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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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together897 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,377 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the cabbage
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, turnip, celery, tomato, butter, milk):
- Leekfits better
- Potatofits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Cabbagethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, celery, tomato, butter, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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