Name: Mutton Soup
Ingredients: 2 onions, chopped fine; 1 potato, diced; ½ cup barley; 2 large tomatoes, chopped; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; 1 tablespoon flour; cold water

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Soup

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, combine onions, potato, barley, and tomatoes.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Boil for one hour, stirring often to prevent burning.
Before removing from heat, mix flour with cold water and add to the soup.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + barleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, potato, barley, pepper, flour):

Leekfits better
Chivefits better
Turnipfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, potato, barley, pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.