Name: Mock-turtle Soup
Ingredients: best pieces of hare; 2 tablespoons ketchup; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Ketchup and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,207 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mock-turtle Soup

Ingredients

best pieces of hare
2 tablespoons ketchup
pepper
coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare

Purify the soup using a hair sieve.
Put the purified soup into a pot with the best pieces of hare and ketchup.

Cook and season

Boil for 30 minutes.
Add pepper and salt to taste.

Serve

Serve with pieces of hare 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.

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.

Ketchup + peppertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,207 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hare: Supplies the main meat and savory, rich flavor of the soup.
Ketchup: Adds tomato-based sweetness and acidity, deepening the soup's color and flavor.

“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.