Skip to main content
Soup

Soter's Cheap Soups

A hearty barley and meat soup with onions, turnips, leeks, celery, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soter's Cheap Soups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large saucepan, heat 2 ounces of dripping over medium heat.

  2. Add ¼ pound of solid meat and ¼ pound of sliced onions; stir for a few minutes.

  3. Add ¼ pound of sliced turnips, 2 ounces of sliced leeks, and 3 ounces of chopped celery.

  4. Stir in ¾ pound of flour, ½ pound of pearl barley (or 1 pound of Scotch barley), 3 ounces of salt, and ¼ ounce of brown sugar.

  5. Pour in 2 gallons of water and bring to a boil.

  6. Simmer for several hours until the flavors meld.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 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

Solid meat
Provides the main savoury flavour and body of the soup.
Common flour
Thickens the broth as it simmers, giving it body.
Pearl barley
Softens during simmering, adding texture and thickening the soup.
Dripping
Fat for browning the meat and onions, adding richness.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding the flour and barley. Flour and barley must cook long enough in the liquid to lose their raw taste and to thicken and soften properly. Stirring helps prevent lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, turnip, leek, celery, flour, barley, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, turnip, leek, celery, flour, barley, sugar. 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

Cream of CeleryCream of Celery37 recipesMeatless Green Pea SoupMeatless Green Pea Soup22 recipesIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipes