Name: Turkey Soup
Ingredients: cold turkey meat, cut into pieces; 1 onion, chopped; 1 carrot, chopped; 1 turnip, chopped; celery, chopped; parsley, chopped; any additional vegetables you have on hand; boiled rice

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Turkey Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Crack all the bones of the cold turkey and cut the meat into pieces.
Add the chopped onion, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, and any additional vegetables.
Boil slowly for three hours.
Strain the soup and add boiled rice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 (turkey, meat, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, rice):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, meat, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.