Name: Elixir a
Ingredients: 6 large onions; 3 carrots; 1 handful of parsley; 1 lump of good fresh butter; 6 ounces of sugar-candy; 20 grains of pounded amber; 1 toasted crust of bread; 3 bottles of water

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Chop the onions, carrots, and parsley together.
Heat the butter in a saucepan and brown the chopped vegetables.
Add the sugar-candy, pounded amber, toasted bread, and water.
Boil for 45 minutes, adding water to maintain 3 bottles of liquid in the saucepan.
Prepare an old cock by killing, plucking, and emptying it, then cut into joints and pound in a mortar with an iron pestle.
Chop 2 pounds of the best lean beef.

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

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Butter + breadtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,145 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together21,599 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together25,834 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together42,827 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, butter, sugar, bread):

Potatobetter flavor fit
Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Parsnipbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, butter, sugar, bread. 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).