Name: Tapioca Cream Soup
Ingredients: 1 pint of cream or milk; 1 onion, chopped; 2 stalks of celery, chopped; 2 cups of cold water; 2 tablespoons of tapioca; 1 tablespoon of ground mace; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; 1 tablespoon of butter

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the tapioca and soak it in cold water overnight.
In a pot, combine the tapioca, cold water, and stock. Cook gently for about one hour.
Strain the mixture to remove the tapioca and stock.
In a separate pot, melt the butter and sauté the onion and celery until soft.
Add the strained mixture, cream or milk, and ground mace. Season with salt and pepper.
Heat through and 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.

Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 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 mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, onion, celery, pepper, butter):

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Macethe original

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