Name: Spanish Soup
Ingredients: 1 pound white beans; 1 small white cabbage, chopped; 1 bit of bacon; 1 whole red pepper; Salt to taste; Lard or drippings for frying; 1 onion, sliced; Olive butter (optional); Garlic (optional)

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Spanish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

Soak the white beans overnight.
Boil the beans the next morning until tender.

Make the soup

Add the chopped cabbage, bacon, red pepper, and salt to the beans.
Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

In a saucepan, heat lard or drippings and fry the sliced onion.
Gradually add the soup to the saucepan, stirring often with a wooden spoon.
Add olive butter and garlic for extra flavor.

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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,665 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,470 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + garlictop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,935 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

White beans: Provide the main body of the soup and soften into a thick, hearty texture when cooked.
White cabbage: Adds bulk and mild sweetness as it softens in the simmering broth.
Bacon: Releases fat and smoky, savory flavor into the soup as it cooks.
Onion: Frying in lard develops sweet, savory aroma that builds the base flavor.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.