Name: Giblet Soup
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; 1 onion, chopped; 1 small carrot, sliced; part of a turnip, sliced; 2 tablespoons flour; giblets of 4 chickens or 2 turkeys

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,002 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Giblet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.
Add the onion, carrot, and turnip; cook until they begin to brown.
Stir in the flour and giblets; sauté until golden brown.

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

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,002 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together7,585 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, turnip, flour, chicken):

Leekbetter flavor fit
Okrabetter flavor fit
Chivebetter flavor fit
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, turnip, flour, chicken. 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).