Name: Green-corn Soup
Ingredients: 1 fowl (preferably tough for boiling or roasting); 12 ears of green corn; 4 oz. of rice; a bunch of herbs; 2 quarts of water; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Corn and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Green-corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the fowl into joints and place them in a large pot with the water. Boil for 1.5 hours.
Cut the corn from the cob and add it to the pot. Stew for another hour.
Remove the fowl joints when tender, cut the meat from the bones into dice, and return it to the pot.
Add the chopped herbs, rice, and seasoning. Boil for 20 minutes.
If the soup is too thick, add more water as needed.

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.

Corn + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl: Provides the meat and rich broth flavor as it simmers for a long time.
Green corn: Adds sweetness and body to the soup as it stews.
Rice: Thickens the soup as its starch releases during boiling.

“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.