Name: Soup a Vin
Ingredients: 2-3 slices of bread, crusts removed; sifted white sugar, for dusting; 1 cup hot wine (port or claret); 1 cup hot water

Why it works: Bread and wine work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and 952 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

2-3 slices of bread, crusts removed
sifted white sugar, for dusting
1 cup hot wine (port or claret)
1 cup hot water

Directions

Toast the bread slices until golden.
Place the toasted bread in a soup plate.
Dust each piece of bread with sifted white sugar.
Pour hot wine and water over the bread.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Bread + winetop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together952 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Sugar + winetop 19% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together8,943 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Bread + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together8,541 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Forms the base that soaks up the hot liquid and gives the soup body.
Wine: Provides the main flavor and acidity, and its warmth softens the bread.
White sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the wine.

“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.