Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Tapioca Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil water in a saucepan.
Cook
Sprinkle tapioca into the boiling water, stirring constantly.
Let it boil for 30 minutes, still stirring.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve
Pour into a tureen and serve.
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.
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tapioca
- Starch granules swell and thicken the boiling water, giving the soup body.
The step that matters
Sprinkling the tapioca into the boiling water. Tapioca added all at once or without stirring can clump, because the outside of each granule hydrates and seals before the inside does. Sprinkling slowly while stirring keeps the granules separate so they thicken evenly.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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