Name: A Baked Soup
Ingredients: 1 pound of any kind of meat, sliced; 2 onions, chopped; 2 carrots, chopped; 2 tablespoons of rice; 1 pint of split peas (or whole peas, soaked); pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 gallon of water

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,555 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Baked Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

Bake

In an earthen jug or pan, combine the meat, onions, carrots, rice, split peas, pepper, and salt.
Pour in the gallon of water and cover the jug tightly.
Bake in the oven for several hours until the meat is tender and flavors meld.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,477 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,994 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together10,433 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

Meat: Becomes tender during the long, slow bake, adding savory flavor to the broth.
Split peas: Thicken the soup as they soften and break down during the long bake.
Rice: Adds body to the soup as its starch releases into the liquid.

Flavor stand-ins for the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, carrot, rice, pepper):

Beansbetter flavor fit
Sesamebetter flavor fit
Black-eyed peabetter flavor fit
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, carrot, rice, pepper. 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).

“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.