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Parker House Soup

A thickened beef soup made with butter, flour, and sugar, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Parker House Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Strain the beef stock through a colander.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan until light brown.

  3. Remove the pan from heat.

  4. Sift in the flour and mix well.

  5. Add 1 pint of the hot soup.

  6. Pour the mixture into the soup kettle.

Cook and finish

  1. Season with pepper, salt, and sugar.

  2. Place the kettle on the fire.

  3. Stir until it boils and boil.

  4. Skim for 5 minutes.

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.

  1. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavours.
Butter
Browned butter adds a nutty aroma and richer flavour to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the savoury stock.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the butter. Sifting the flour into the butter and mixing well keeps it smooth. Lumps form if flour is added to hot fat without thorough stirring, and those lumps do not dissolve evenly into the soup.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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