Name: Pease-soup
Ingredients: 139 small onions; 1 quart boiling water; coarse sea salt; white pepper; 1 head fresh celery (or 2 teaspoons bruised celery seed); toasted bread (for serving); butter (optional, for enrichment); flour (optional, for enrichment)

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pease-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Skim the soup and simmer for 1.5 hours, ensuring it doesn't stick to the pot.
Add 1 quart of boiling water or pot-liquor from boiled poultry or meat.
Simmer until the peas are completely dissolved.
Pour the soup through a sieve into a pan, using a wooden spoon to pulp the peas.
Return some strained soup to moisten the remaining mash until fully pulped.
Add salt, white pepper, and pulped onions to the strained soup.
Roughly shred the celery or place bruised celery seed in a muslin bag and add to the soup.
Simmer the soup for 30-45 minutes if too thin.
Serve in a tureen with toasted bread cut into dice or diamonds, or serve the bread on a plate.
Stir the soup before serving.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,905 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, bread, butter, flour):

Parsleyfits better
Capersfits better
Thymefits better
White pepperthe original

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