Name: Apple Soup
Ingredients: fresh apples; grated bread; lemon peel; lemon juice; cinnamon; cardamom; white wine; sugar; toasted bread

Why it works: Cinnamon and cardamom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,299 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Peel and core the fresh apples.
Boil the apples with grated bread, lemon peel, lemon juice, cinnamon, and cardamom until they are soft.
Rub the mixture through a sieve to create a pulp.
Add white wine and sweeten to taste.
Serve the soup with toasted bread.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Cinnamon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,299 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together405 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together372 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, bread, cinnamon, cardamom, white wine, sugar):

Figbetter flavor fit
Pearbetter flavor fit
Vanillabetter flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, bread, cinnamon, cardamom, white wine, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).