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Amber Soup

A hearty beef soup with pork, vegetables, and orange rind, clarified with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Amber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the beef and bones with cold water and let stand.

  2. Fry the salt pork in a pan until crisp, then remove it.

  3. Brown the sliced onions in the pork fat, then remove them.

  4. Add the reserved bits of beef to the pan and cook until very brown and crisp.

  5. In a large kettle, combine the pork, onions, browned meat, remaining beef, and bones.

  6. Add the carrots, turnip, cabbage, celery, and bay leaves.

  7. Fill the kettle with water, using 1 quart for every pound of meat.

Simmer and clarify

  1. Cover and heat gradually, boiling very slowly for 5-6 hours.

  2. Strain the soup and let it cool overnight, then skim off the fat.

  3. Reheat the strained soup an hour before serving.

  4. Stir in the egg whites and broken shells to clarify the soup.

  5. Remove the scum as it rises, then season with pepper, salt, mace, and sherry or brandy.

  6. Add the orange rind or dried peel and lemon slices during the final boil.

Serve

  1. Strain into a tureen and 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.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  4. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Shin beef
Long, slow simmering breaks down connective tissue and gives the broth body and rich flavour.
Beef bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the water during the long simmer, adding body to the broth.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat carries flavour into the browning step and enriches the soup.
Onions
Browning them in pork fat builds sweetness and deep savoury flavour in the broth.
Egg whites and shells
Coagulating proteins gather impurities into a raft, leaving the soup clear.

The step that matters

Boiling very slowly and clarifying. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear, since a hard boil emulsifies fat and churns particles into the liquid. Removing scum as it rises keeps the soup clean and clear.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, meat):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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

“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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