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Soup

Philadelphia Pepper Pot

A hearty soup of tripe, calves' feet, pepper, and vegetables simmered with herbs and finished with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Philadelphia Pepper Pot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Place the tripe and calves' feet in a soup pot and cover with cold water.

  2. Add the red pepper and boil until the calves' feet are very tender.

  3. Remove the meat, skim the liquid, and stir it.

  4. Cut the tripe into small pieces and return it to the liquid.

  5. If needed, add boiling water to maintain liquid level.

Finish the pot

  1. Add marjoram, basil, thyme, onions, potatoes, and salt.

  2. When the vegetables are almost tender, add butter rolled in flour.

  3. Drop in egg balls and boil for an additional 15 minutes.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tripe
Provides the bulk of the soup and becomes tender during long simmering.
Calves' feet
Release gelatin into the broth, giving it body and a silky mouthfeel.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-like paste that thickens the broth as it cooks.
Potatoes
Soften in the broth and add starch that further thickens the liquid.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the butter rolled in flour. Flour clumps if dropped in raw. Rolling butter in flour and adding it when the vegetables are nearly tender lets it disperse and thicken the broth smoothly rather than lumping.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, marjoram, basil, thyme, potato, butter, flour):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, marjoram, basil, thyme, potato, butter, flour. 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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