Name: Celery Soup
Ingredients: 3 large young cucumbers, sliced; 1 handful of spring onions, chopped; 6 small lettuces, chopped; 8 ounces of butter; stock (as needed); flour (for thickening); butter (for thickening); 3 tablespoons of cream (optional); spinach juice (for coloring, optional)

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a stewpan over low heat.
Add the cucumbers, spring onions, and lettuces to the melted butter.
Cover and cook for 1 hour and 20 minutes over low heat.
Add enough stock to achieve the desired soup quantity.
Bring to a boil, then simmer for 1 hour.
Thicken the soup with flour and butter or stir in cream.
If desired, add spinach juice for color.

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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together427 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together355 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,336 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, lettuce, butter, flour, cream):

Chivefits better
Leekfits about as well
Beetrootfits about as well
Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, lettuce, butter, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.