Name: Vermicelli Soup
Ingredients: 4 lbs soup meat; soup vegetables and seasonings; 5 eggs; 1 oz vermicelli; 1 tbsp salt

Why it works: Meat and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,432 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Vermicelli Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

Prepare the stock by simmering the soup meat with vegetables and seasonings until flavorful.

Cook the vermicelli

In a separate pot, bring plenty of water to a boil and add 1 tablespoon of salt for every quart of water.
Add the vermicelli to the boiling water and cook until tender, then drain and rinse with cold water.

Serve

Before serving, add the cooked vermicelli to the hot soup and heat thoroughly.

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.

Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,432 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup meat: Gives the stock its body and savory, meaty flavor as it simmers.
Eggs: Listed in the ingredients but not used in any step of this method.
Vermicelli: Thin pasta that softens in the hot broth and adds starchy body to the soup.