Name: Consommé
Ingredients: meat (beef or veal); water; vegetables (carrots, onions, celery); herbs (thyme, bay leaf); salt; pepper

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Consommé

Ingredients

Directions

Place meat in a large pot and cover with water.
Add chopped vegetables and herbs.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for several hours.
Strain the soup into a large bowl and refrigerate overnight.
Remove the fat from the surface and pour the clear liquid into a saucepan.
Boil again for 1 to 2 hours until it thickens into a jelly.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,563 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,193 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Turnipfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, celery, thyme, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.