Skip to main content
Main

Amber Soup

A beef soup simmered slowly with pork, onions, vegetables, orange rind, and clarified with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the stock

  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, bones, carrots, turnip, cabbage, celery, and bay leaves.

  6. Fill the kettle with water, using 1 quart per pound of meat.

  7. Cover and heat gradually, boiling very slowly for 5-6 hours, ensuring it doesn't boil away more than half.

  8. Strain the soup.

  9. Let it cool, then skim off the fat the next day.

Clarify and finish

  1. Pour the soup through a fine strainer into a soup kettle.

  2. Heat for an hour before serving.

  3. Stir in the egg whites and broken shells to clarify the soup, removing scum as it rises.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace.

  5. Add sherry or brandy.

  6. Optionally add orange rind or peel.

  7. Add lemon slices during the final boiling.

  8. Strain into a tureen just before serving.

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
Breaks down during long simmering to give the stock body and rich meaty flavour.
Beef bones
Release gelatin and collagen during slow simmering, giving the stock body and mouthfeel.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat adds richness and savoury depth to the stock.
Egg whites and shells
Coagulate as they heat, trapping suspended particles so the soup clears.
Sliced onions
Browned in pork fat, they add sweetness and deep savoury colour to the stock.
Brown sherry or brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, slightly sweet depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil very slowly and skim the fat. A vigorous boil clouds the stock and emulsifies fat into it, while slow simmering keeps it clear. Chilling overnight lets the fat set on top so it can be lifted off cleanly.

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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes