Name: Pea-Soap
Ingredients: 1 rabbit; 2 onions; 2 potatoes; 1 leg of mutton; bread; butter; 1 pie crust; 2 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-Soap

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the rabbit with onions until tender.
Mash the potatoes and serve as a side.
Roast the leg of mutton until cooked through.
Prepare bread-and-butter pudding using bread and butter.
Make vince pies with the pie crust and filling.
Stew the pears until soft.
Cook the partridges and serve them alongside.

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).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,488 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,292 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, mutton, bread, butter):

Coconutfits better
Applefits better
Mangofits about as well
Pearthe original

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