Name: Flemish Soup
Ingredients: 2 ounces butter; 6 onions, sliced; 3 heads of celery, chopped; 1 dozen medium-sized potatoes, peeled and quartered; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 pint cream; macaroni, broken into short lengths

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Flemish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.
Add the stock or broth and bring to a gentle boil.
Add the sliced onions and chopped celery, and simmer for 1 hour.
In a separate saucepan, boil the quartered potatoes until tender.
Drain the potatoes and add them to the onion and celery mixture.
Season with pepper and salt.
Once the potatoes are dissolved, strain the mixture through a sieve.
Stir in the cream and bring to a boil.
Add the cooked macaroni just 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, potato, pepper, cream):

Garlicfits better
Parsleyfits about as well
Thymefits about as well
Celerythe original

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