Name: Pea-Soup
Ingredients: 1 boiled rabbit; onions; mashed potatoes; celery; 1 leg of mutton; bread-and-butter pudding; mince pies; stewed pears; 2 partridges

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pea-Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the rabbit and smother it in onions.
Prepare mashed potatoes and serve with celery.
Roast the leg of mutton.
Make bread-and-butter pudding.
Prepare mince pies.
Stew the pears.
Cook the partridges.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,488 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, onion, potato, celery, mutton, bread, butter):

Lemonfits better
Coconutfits better
Applefits better
Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, onion, potato, celery, mutton, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.