Name: Corn Soup
Ingredients: 1 soup bone; water; cabbage (finely chopped); onion (finely chopped); 12 ears of sweet corn (grated)

Why it works: Cabbage and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,001 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Corn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cover the soup bone with water and boil for 1 hour.
Add the finely chopped cabbage and onion, and boil for 2 more hours.
Stir in the grated sweet corn and season 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.

Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,001 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + corntop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together234 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Onion + corntop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,205 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone: Releases flavour and body into the broth during long simmering.
Cabbage: Adds soft texture and mild sweetness as it cooks into the broth.
Onion: Builds savoury depth as it softens and blends into the broth.
Sweet corn: Adds sweetness and body, thickening the soup as the grated kernels release starch.