Name: On Stock, and Clear Soups
Ingredients: meat (beef or other); cold water; vegetables (carrots, onions, etc.); bouquet of sweet herbs (parsley, thyme, etc.); spices; sugar; sauce; ketchup

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

On Stock, and Clear Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Cover the meat with cold water in a pot.
Bring the water to a boil slowly, skimming off any foam that forms.
Add the vegetables, bouquet of herbs, spices, sugar, sauce, and ketchup.
Simmer for three hours, skimming fat as needed.
Strain the broth into a basin and let it cool to remove any remaining fat.
Warm the clear broth before serving with macaroni, bread sippets, or vegetables.

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.

Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,563 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, parsley, thyme, sugar, sauce, ketchup):

Shallotfits better
Turnipfits better
Parsnipfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, parsley, thyme, sugar, sauce, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.