Name: Gravy Soup
Ingredients: 4 pounds meat in a tin; boiling water; pepper; coarse sea salt; small cubes of toasted bread

Why it works: Meat and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Place the tin in a saucepan of boiling water to loosen the fat and jelly.
Pour a little hot water into the tin to avoid soaking the meat.
Turn the meat into a large basin and pour over it more boiling water.
Remove the meat to a dish and pour the basin contents into a 2-quart saucepan.
Add enough boiling water to make 1 quart or 3 pints of stock.
Bring to a boil, skim off the fat, and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Strain into a soup tureen over small cubes of toasted bread and serve.

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.

Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).