Name: Modern Cookery
Ingredients: liquor from cooked meat; rice flour or arrowroot for thickening; 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
rice flour or arrowroot for thickening
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 rice flour or arrowroot for thickening, along with pepper and salt if needed.
Stir in 1 tablespoon of mushroom ketchup.
Cut the meat into small, thick slices and add it to the soup.
Serve the soup 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour or arrowroot: Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, fuller body.
Mushroom ketchup: Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the broth.
Meat: Supplies the main body and savoury flavour of the soup.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.