Name: Tomato Soup
Ingredients: turnips; carrots; onions; 1 stalk of celery; ½ pound of lean ham; a little fresh butter

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Steam or stew turnips, carrots, onions, and celery with ham and butter over low heat for about 1 hour.
Add tomatoes and continue cooking until well combined.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together10,173 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together21,601 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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, celery, ham, butter):

Leekbetter flavor fit
Parsnipbetter flavor fit
Mustardabout as good a flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, ham, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).