Name: Soup
Ingredients: pieces of meat; fruit; vegetables; beef; chicken bones; turkey bones; soup bone; knuckle of veal

Why it works: Beef and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Save pieces of meat, fruit, or vegetables for the soup kettle.
Do not let the kettle sit on the stove for days to avoid fermentation.
Do not remove the brown particles from the soup.
Make stock using beef or bones from chicken, turkey, or veal.
Clean the beef with a wet cloth instead of washing it in water.

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.

Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,148 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Chicken + turkeytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together688 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).
Beef + turkeytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together248 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,533 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).