Name: Old Fashioned Bean Soup
Ingredients: 1 ham bone; 1 pint soup beans; 2 or 3 onions

Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Old Fashioned Bean Soup

Ingredients

1 ham bone
1 pint soup beans
2 or 3 onions

Directions

Boil the ham bone in a large pot of water.
Add the soup beans and onions to the pot.
Cook until the beans are tender.

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.

Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,159 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Ham + beanstop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together140 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).