Name: Mutton Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart milk; 2 tablespoons flour; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 1 tablespoon fresh parsley or 1 teaspoon celery salt; 1 celery root or 1 teaspoon celery salt; 3 tablespoons rice; 2 eggs

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton Soup

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, combine the broth from a boiled leg of mutton with 1 quart of milk.
Thicken the mixture with 2 tablespoons of flour, stirring until smooth.
Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, parsley, and celery root or celery salt.
Add 3 tablespoons of rice that has been boiled soft in some of the broth.
Slowly pour the mixture over 2 beaten eggs in a tureen.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,169 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 celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, pepper, parsley, rice, egg):

Nutmegfits better
Turmericfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, pepper, parsley, rice, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.