Name: Potato Soup with Vermicelli
Ingredients: 2 large potatoes; 4 cups water; ½ cup vermicelli; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste

Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Soup with Vermicelli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel and dice the potatoes.
In a pot, bring water to a boil.

Cook

Add the diced potatoes and cook until tender.
Stir in the vermicelli and cook until soft.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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.

Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Soften during cooking and thicken the soup slightly as their starch releases into the broth.
Vermicelli: Adds body and soft texture to the soup as it cooks in the broth.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.