Name: Meat-soups
Ingredients: 3 quarts good broth; 2 carrots, chopped; 3 or 4 turnips, chopped; 2 heads of celery, chopped; 1 lettuce, chopped; a little parsley, chopped; some small onions, chopped; a few spoonfuls of rice, boiled separately

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Meat-soups

Ingredients

Directions

In a large pot, combine the broth and chopped vegetables.
Stew until the vegetables are tender.
Add the boiled rice to the pot.
Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Broth: Provides the liquid base and most of the savory flavor of the soup.
Rice: Adds body and thickens the soup slightly as it cooks.
Carrots: Contribute sweetness and firm texture that holds up during simmering.
Turnips: Add mild sweetness and a firm, tender texture after long cooking.
Celery: Adds aromatic flavor and a tender, fibrous texture to the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, lettuce, parsley, rice):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, lettuce, parsley, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.