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Amber SouP

A clear, seasoned soup made with onion, carrot, turnip, parsnip, ham or bacon, herbs, spices, stock, and caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Amber SouP

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Fry the onion, carrot, turnip, and parsnip with bits of ham or bacon until they are a delicate brown.

  2. Transfer the contents to a soup pot and add thyme, parsley, bay leaf, cloves, and peppercorns.

  3. Cover with stock and simmer for an hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain and clarify the soup.

  2. Reheat the soup.

  3. Season the soup.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of caramel.

  5. Serve the soup.

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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  5. Parsnip + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion, carrot, turnip, and parsnip
Browned vegetables build the soup's deep flavour and colour as they fry.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that extracts flavour from the vegetables and aromatics during simmering.
Caramel (in the method)
Adds a deeper amber colour and a slight toasted sweetness to the soup.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables until delicate brown. Browning the vegetables produces Maillard reaction flavours that give the soup its depth. Pale or burnt vegetables change the flavour and colour noticeably, so stop at a light, even brown.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, parsnip, ham, thyme, parsley, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsnip, ham, thyme, parsley, clove. 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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