Name: Vermicelli Soup
Ingredients: shanks of beef or bones of beef, mutton, turkey, or chicken; cabbage; carrots; onions; celery; dripping from the stock; vermicelli; Worcestershire sauce

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 ↓

Vermicelli Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock by boiling shanks or bones of beef, mutton, turkey, or chicken all day.
Strain the stock and skim off the grease the next morning.
Cut up the vegetables: cabbage, carrots, onions, and celery.
Brown the vegetables slowly in some of the dripping from the stock.
Boil the vegetables in the stock for three hours and strain again.
Add vermicelli and flavor with Worcestershire sauce.
Boil for about fifteen minutes.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,840 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 (beef, carrot, onion, celery, sauce):

Turnipfits better
Tomatofits better
Leekfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, celery, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.