Name: Bean Soup
Ingredients: 2 cups left-over beans; 2 cups cold mashed potatoes; 1 pint water; salt to taste; nut butter to taste; water to thin; thyme or parsley (optional)

Why it works: Potato and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,586 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

Combine the beans, mashed potatoes, and water in a kettle.
Boil until warmed through.
Strain through a colander.

Season and serve

Season with salt and nut butter.
Thin with additional water to your desired consistency.
Add thyme or parsley for flavor if desired.

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.

Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,586 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Beans + thymetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together488 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + thymetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,758 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Left-over beans: Form the body of the soup and provide most of its substance.
Mashed potatoes: Add body and a thicker, creamier texture to the soup.
Nut butter: Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavor of the soup.