Name: Scotch Leek-Soup
Ingredients: water from boiling a leg of mutton; chopped leeks; pepper; coarse sea salt; oatmeal; cold water

Why it works: Leek and pepper work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 965 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Scotch Leek-Soup

Ingredients

Directions

In a stew pot, combine the water from boiling a leg of mutton with chopped leeks, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Simmer for one hour.
Mix oatmeal with a little cold water until smooth.
Pour the oatmeal mixture into the soup.
Set the pot on a low heat and let it simmer gently, ensuring it does not burn.

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.

Leek + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together965 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,442 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + leektop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together226 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).