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Soup

Squirrel Soup

A hearty soup made from squirrel meat, vegetables, and bread, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and lima beans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Squirrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the squirrels in a pot with ½ tablespoon of coarse sea salt and 1 gallon of cold water.

  2. Cover the pot and simmer gently on the back of the stove.

  3. Add vegetables like corn, Irish potatoes, tomatoes, okra, and Lima beans.

  4. Once the meat has boiled down, strain the soup through a coarse colander to remove bones.

  5. Return the strained soup to the pot and boil longer.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the soup with a piece of butter rubbed in flour.

  2. Add chopped celery and parsley for flavor.

  3. Toast 2 slices of bread, cut into 1‑inch dice, and fry them in butter.

  4. Place the fried bread in the bottom of a tureen and pour the hot soup over it.

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. Okra + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrels
Provide the meat and body of the broth as they simmer and break down.
Flour
Thickens the soup when rubbed into butter and stirred into the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps bind the flour that thickens the soup.
Bread
Frying the diced bread in butter gives crisp, browned pieces that hold their texture in the soup.

The step that matters

Straining the soup after the meat has boiled down. Bones must be fully removed through the colander, since small fragments are easy to miss and can be unpleasant to eat. Straining also gives the broth a clear, smooth body before it is returned to the pot.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, potato, tomato, okra, lima beans, butter, flour):

  1. Cuminfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, potato, tomato, okra, lima beans, 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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