Name: Hare Soup
Ingredients: 1 lb celery; 1 lb turnip; 1 lb carrot; 1 lb onion; 1 lb German lentils; 2 oz butter; Jamaica pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 3 quarts water

Why it works: Turnip and lentils match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 109 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Soak lentils for 24 hours.
Chop turnip, carrot, and onion.
In a pot, melt butter and add chopped vegetables.
Sauté over medium heat for 15 minutes without browning.
Add soaked lentils and boiling water.
Simmer soup slowly for 3 hours.
Strain through a fine sieve and return to pot.
Add Jamaica pepper mixed with a little water and salt to taste.
Serve hot in a tureen with forcemeat balls or toast.

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.

Turnip + lentilstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together109 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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 (celery, turnip, carrot, lentils, butter, pepper):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

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