Name: Soup Powder
Ingredients: 1 ounce thyme; 1 ounce basil; 1 ounce sweet marjoram; 1 ounce summer savory; 1 ounce dried lemon peel; 1 ounce celery seeds; 2 ounces dried parsley; 1 teaspoon mace; 1 teaspoon pepper

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Soup Powder

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Combine all herbs and spices in a bowl.
Dry the mushrooms in a warm oven until fully dehydrated.
Pound the dried ingredients into a fine powder.
Sift the mixture and bottle it tightly for storage.
Use the powder to season soups or gravies.

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.

Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,225 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).
Thyme + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together214 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Marjoram + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together125 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Basil + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together688 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).
Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (thyme, basil, marjoram, summer savory, lemon, celery, parsley):

Sagefits better
Winter savoryfits better
Tarragonfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, basil, marjoram, summer savory, lemon, celery, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.