Name: Pluck Soup
Ingredients: 1 Sheep's Pluck; 3 ozs. Rice; Salt; Pepper; 2 quarts Water; 2 tablespoons chopped Onions; Parsley

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pluck Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the pluck well and soak in salted water for 1 hour.
Remove the pluck and wash thoroughly.
Wash the rice.

Make the soup

Place the pluck in a pan with water and seasonings.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Add finely chopped onion.
Cook for 1.5 hours.
Add the rice to the pot and boil for an additional 30 minutes.
Remove the pluck from the pot.
Cut the lights and heart into dice.

Serve

Chop parsley finely.
Place the chopped parsley in a heated soup tureen.
Pour the boiling soup over the parsley before serving.
Serve the diced pluck in the soup.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,762 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Thickens the soup slightly as its starch softens during boiling.
Sheep's pluck: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering.
Onions: Add aromatic flavour that builds into the broth as it cooks.