Name: Curry Rice Soup
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 1 tablespoon curry powder; 2 quarts soup stock (mutton, chicken, or veal); ½ onion, minced; 2 tablespoons minced parsley; salt to taste

Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curry Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the rice in the soup stock with the minced onion for 15 minutes.
Add the parsley, salt, and curry powder.
Simmer for 20 minutes until thick.
Serve hot.

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.

Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,762 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + muttontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,531 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Breaks down during simmering and thickens the soup into a hearty body.
Curry powder: Supplies the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the dish.
Soup stock: Forms the liquid base that carries flavour and cooks the rice.
Onion: Adds savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens in the stock.