Name: Stewed Protose
Ingredients: 1 pint boiling water; equal quantity of protose, cut into half-inch squares; 1 sliced onion; a little parsley; a few bits of celery; salt to taste

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Protose

Ingredients

Directions

Bring 1 pint of water to a boil in a double boiler.
Add an equal quantity of protose cut into half-inch squares.
Cook for 2 hours.
Add sliced onion, parsley, and celery for flavoring about 15 minutes before done.
Season with salt and serve hot.

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.

Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Protose: Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks slowly in water.
Onion: Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid during the final minutes.