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Quick Egg Soup

A quick soup made with boiling water, beef extract, onion, celery, salt, pepper, beaten eggs, and boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Quick Egg Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Stir the beef extract into the boiling water.

  2. Add the grated onion, celery seed or chopped celery, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stir constantly until it reaches the boiling point.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the hot broth into the well-beaten eggs.

  2. Add the boiled rice and serve very 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  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. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs set lightly in the hot broth, giving the soup body and a silky texture.
Beef extract
Concentrated beef flavour that gives the broth its savoury base.
Boiled rice
Adds bulk and soft texture so the soup is more filling.

The step that matters

Pour the hot broth into the well-beaten eggs. The broth must be hot enough to cook the egg as it goes in. Pouring slowly while stirring helps the egg set in fine strands rather than clumping.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, celery, pepper, egg, rice):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, celery, pepper, egg, rice. 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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