Name: French Rice Soup
Ingredients: 2 oz butter; 1 onion, peeled and studded with cloves; 14 pints hot water; ½ pint milk; 1 large teaspoon Marmite; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; Nutmeg, to taste; Cornflour (optional, for thickening)

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the rice two or three times.
In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the rice, stirring over the heat for a few minutes.
Dissolve the Marmite in hot water and add it to the rice.
Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and add the onion and milk.
Simmer gently for about 35 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
Season with salt, pepper, and a grate of nutmeg to taste.
Remove the onion before serving. If desired, thicken the soup with a little cornflour and return the chopped onion before serving.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 (butter, clove, milk, pepper, nutmeg):

Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Potatofits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, milk, pepper, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.