Name: Bone Soup
Ingredients: Salt pork, pounded to pieces; 2 minced carrots; 2 turnips, diced; 2 onions, chopped; 2 stalks of celery, chopped; Bunch of sweet herbs; Salt and pepper to taste; ½ cup tapioca, soaked in 1 cup of cold water for 2 hours; 5 quarts of water

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 ↓

Bone Soup

Ingredients

Directions

In a large pot, combine the bones and vegetables early in the day.
Cover with half of the water.
Once boiling, remove any scum that rises to the surface.
Add another quart of cold water to bring up more scum, then skim again.
Add the remaining water and cover the pot.
Cook gently for 4 hours if possible.
Divide the liquid into two parts; set half aside in a stone jar with the bones and salt for stock.
Strain the other half through a fine sieve without pressing the solids.
Season the strained soup, skim it carefully after boiling, and stir in the soaked tapioca.
Simmer for 20 minutes until ready.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, turnip, celery, pepper):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

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