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Iced Clear Soup

A chilled clear broth made from veal, beef, onion, celery, peppercorns, cloves, and egg, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Iced Clear Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large pot, combine the veal, beef, onion, peppercorns, cloves, celery, and cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer slowly for 6 hours.

  3. Remove from heat, season with salt, and let cool overnight.

  4. Skim off the fat, then strain the soup without pressing the solids.

Clarify the soup

  1. Heat the strained soup until scalding, then add the white and shell of an egg.

  2. Boil briskly for 10 minutes, then strain through a flannel bag without squeezing.

Chill and serve

  1. Cool the soup and refrigerate it in a jar surrounded by ice until ready to serve.

  2. Before serving, chill the tureen by rinsing it with ice water.

  3. Serve the soup in chilled cups, accompanied by French rolls or thin slices of bread.

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. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the water during long simmering, giving body to the broth.
Lean beef
Adds meaty flavor and protein that the egg white later collects during clarification.
Egg white (in the method)
Traps fine particles as it cooks and rises, leaving the soup clear when strained.
Celery
Contributes aromatic flavor to the stock during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat, then strain without pressing the solids. Fat left in the stock clouds the soup and tastes greasy when chilled. Pressing the solids forces cloudy particles through the strainer, which undoes the clear result the long simmer was meant to produce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, onion, celery):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, onion, celery. 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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