Name: Parsnip Soup
Ingredients: 1 pint boiling milk; 2 ounces butter; 2 teaspoons corn flour; 2 teaspoons flour; coarse sea salt; pepper; 1 teaspoon white sugar; crusts of bread (cut into dice and fried)

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Parsnip Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Drain the celery and preserve the liquor.
Remove the onions and bacon rind, then rub the celery through a sieve.
Melt the butter in a stewpan.
Mix the corn flour and flour smoothly with the butter.
Add a little of the liquor and the celery pulp.
Boil for a few minutes, stirring to prevent lumps.
Add more liquor to achieve a cream-like thickness.
Season with pepper, salt, and sugar.
Pour the boiling milk into a tureen, mix in the soup, and serve hot with fried bread crusts.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).