Name: Split-pea Soup
Ingredients: 3 pints stock; cooked rice or fried bread in butter; onions; leek; chervil

Why it works: Leek and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 148 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Split-pea Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the onions, leek, and chervil from the stock.
Place the remaining ingredients in a colander over another saucepan.
Press through the colander with a wooden spoon.
Add the strained mixture gradually, stirring well.
Transfer to a tureen and pour the soup over it 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.

Leek + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together148 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,326 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).
Rice + leektop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together161 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + cherviltop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together668 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).