Name: Vegetable Soup
Ingredients: 2 oz sago (about ¼ cup); Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Few drops of gravy browning; 1 oz celery (about ¼ cup, diced); 1 quart boiling stock (or water with 1 teaspoon extract of meat)

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

2 oz sago (about ¼ cup)
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Few drops of gravy browning
1 oz celery (about ¼ cup, diced)
1 quart boiling stock (or water with 1 teaspoon extract of meat)

Directions

Soak the sago in water for one hour.
Drain the water and add the sago to boiling stock.
Cut all vegetables into small dice and add to the soup.
Simmer for one hour, then season with salt and pepper.

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.

Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + meattop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,880 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).