Name: Squash and Goose Bone Soup
Ingredients: winter squash, cut into pieces (2-3 inches square); 1 pint milk; 3 tablespoons flour; 3 tablespoons butter; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 tablespoon onion juice

Why it works: Winter squash and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Squash and Goose Bone Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Place the squash pieces in a saucepan and cook slowly until tender.
Press the cooked squash through a colander and return it to the kettle.
In a separate bowl, rub together the flour and butter until creamy.
Add the flour-butter mixture to the squash stock and stir until creamy.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and onion juice. Serve 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.

Winter squash + flourtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together21 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Winter squash + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together47 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 (winter squash, milk, flour, butter, pepper):

Kalefits better
Capsicumfits better
Arrowrootfits better
Onionthe original

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