Name: Modern Cookery
Ingredients: liquor from cooked meat; 2 tablespoons rice flour or arrowroot; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 tablespoon mushroom ketchup; meat, cut into small thick slices

Why it works: Rice and mushroom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,515 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

liquor from cooked meat
2 tablespoons rice flour or arrowroot
pepper to taste
coarse sea salt to taste
1 tablespoon mushroom ketchup
meat, cut into small thick slices

Directions

Strain the liquor and pour it into a large clean saucepan.
Add the rice flour or arrowroot, pepper, and salt.
Stir in the mushroom ketchup.
Cut the meat into small, thick slices and add it to the soup.
Serve as soon as it is very 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.

Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,515 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).