Name: Normandy Soup
Ingredients: 1 quart white button onions; ½ of a 5 cent loaf of bread; 1 quart cream; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 tablespoons butter; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Normandy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

In a kettle, combine veal, onions, and water. Simmer slowly for 2 hours.
Add bread cut into slices and let simmer for 2 more hours.
Remove the meat and press the remaining ingredients through a sieve.
Return the mixture to the kettle. Rub butter and flour together to form a smooth paste and stir into the boiling soup.
Stir constantly until the soup thickens. Add cream, salt, and pepper, then serve.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 (bread, cream, flour, butter, pepper):

Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

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