Name: Calf's Head Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart Consommé (No. 1); 1 quart Consommé (No. 3); ⅓ cup sherry; 1 spray basil; 1 spray marjoram; Salt to taste; Sugar to taste; Cayenne pepper to taste; Lemon for serving

Why it works: Basil and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Calf's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Press the head until it is quite cold.
Cut off the glutinous part and meat into 1-inch squares.
In a stewpan, combine the glutinous matter, Consommé (No. 1), Consommé (No. 3), sherry, basil, marjoram, salt, and sugar.
Let it simmer for 30 minutes, stirring until it reaches boiling point.
Serve with cayenne pepper and lemon.

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.

Basil + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together688 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).
Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together957 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,823 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, marjoram, sugar, pepper, lemon):

Thymefits better
Parsleyfits about as well
Sagefits about as well
Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, marjoram, sugar, pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.