Name: Milk Soup
Ingredients: 1 cup flaked rice; 1 pint milk; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 cup tomato juice; celery salt to taste

Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the flaked rice in milk for 1 hour.
Add a pinch of salt.
Stir in the tomato juice.
Season with celery salt to taste.

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.

Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,169 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Milk + tomatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,226 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flaked rice: Thickens the soup as it soaks and softens in the milk, giving body to the broth.
Milk: Forms the creamy base that the rice soaks up and softens in.
Tomato juice: Adds acidity and a savoury tomato flavour to the milky base.