Name: Pear Soup
Ingredients: 6 to 8 large pears, peeled, cored, and sliced; ½ penny roll, cut into thin slices; 6 cloves; 3 pints water; 2 ounces sugar; juice of 1 fresh lemon; ½ cup light wine

Why it works: Pear and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 512 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

In a stewpan, combine pears, penny loaf slices, cloves, and water.
Simmer until the pears are tender.
Press the mixture through a coarse sieve to create a puree.
Return the puree to the saucepan and add sugar, lemon juice, and light wine.
Boil for about 10 minutes until ready to serve.

Serve

Serve with small sponge cakes.

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.

Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together512 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Pear + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together223 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together942 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pears: Break down into a puree, giving the soup its body and natural sweetness.
Penny roll: Adds starch that thickens the puree and gives the soup body.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Light wine: Adds acidity and aroma to the finished soup.