Name: Gravy Soup
Ingredients: 1 pint rich gravy; 1 handful soup vegetables (carrot, turnip, celery, etc.); coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Gravy Soup

Ingredients

1 pint rich gravy
1 handful soup vegetables (carrot, turnip, celery, etc.)
coarse sea salt (to taste)

Directions

Make sure the stock is well skimmed and clear.
Add the rich gravy to a pot.
Cut the soup vegetables into small dice and add them to the pot.
Boil the mixture until the vegetables are tender.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich gravy: Provides the main body, savory flavor, and liquid base of the soup.
Soup vegetables: Add sweetness, texture, and body as they soften during boiling.