Name: Fish Chowder Soup
Ingredients: raw fish; bones of raw fish; carrots; celery; onions; cold water; flour; butter; raw potatoes

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fish Chowder Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Combine raw fish, fish bones, carrots, celery, and onions in a pot.
Cover with cold water and boil slowly for 2-3 hours.
Strain the mixture to obtain the stock.
In a bowl, mix flour and butter until smooth.
Gradually pour the stock over the flour mixture, stirring continuously to avoid lumps.
Return the mixture to the pot and add sliced raw potatoes and fish.
Boil slowly until the potatoes are tender.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, carrot, celery, flour, butter, potato):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Turnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, carrot, celery, flour, butter, potato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.