Name: Clear Soup
Ingredients: 2 quarts stock; ¾ pound gravy-beef; 2 carrots; 2 turnips; 1½ leeks; 1 cabbage-lettuce; 1 tablespoon young peas; Salt; 1 lump sugar

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Remove all fat from the stock.
Put the stock into a stewpan.
Cut off all fat and skin from the gravy-beef.
Chop the beef very fine.
Add the chopped beef to the stewpan.
Wash the carrots, turnips, and leeks in cold water.
Scrape the carrot clean and slice it.
Peel the turnip and cut it into small pieces.
Chop the leek finely after removing the green leaves and roots.
Add all the vegetables to the stewpan and stir with a spoon.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,046 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Leek + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together217 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, leek, cabbage, lettuce, sugar):

Lentilsfits better
Beansfits better
Chestnutfits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, leek, cabbage, lettuce, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.