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Carrot Soup with Tahini and Crisped Chickpeas

It’s the first week of January, so I am going to go out on a limb and guess that no fewer than 52 percent of you are gnawing on a carrot stick right now. If you’re not gnawing on a carrot stick right now, you probably have some within reach of you. If they’re not within reach of you, they’re in your fridge, because you, like most of us, are more ambitious when it comes to grocery lists than you might be when it’s time to consume said groceries. And if they’re not in your fridge, you might have them on your mind, nagging at you. Early January is like that. (Late January is all about rich comfort foods. Trust me.)

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Why it works: Chickpea and tahini work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 150 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: sesame (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By smittenkitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Chickpea + tahinitop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together150 recipes

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

  2. Coriander + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cumin + chickpeatop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Carrot + cumintop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together776 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, carrot, garlic, coriander, cumin, pepper, chickpea):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, carrot, garlic, coriander, cumin, pepper, chickpea. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).