Name: Lettuce Soup
Ingredients: Lettuce; Coarse sea salt; Parsley; Nut milk (1 quart)

Why it works: Lettuce and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lettuce Soup

Ingredients

Lettuce
Coarse sea salt
Parsley
Nut milk (1 quart)

Directions

Pull apart and wash the lettuce thoroughly.
Place the lettuce in a hot saucepan and shake over the heat until the leaves wilt.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and press through a sieve.
Mince the parsley, pound it to a paste, and add it to the sifted lettuce.
Stir in 1 quart of heated nut milk and let it boil once.
Season to taste and serve. Optionally, thicken 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + milktop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together411 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Parsley + milktop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,011 recipes

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