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Excellent Portable Soup

A thickened soup made from ham, beef, veal, celery, anchovies, mace, shallots, carrots, and spices, cooled into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Excellent Portable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and vegetables

  1. Slice the meat from the ham, beef, and veal, and chop the bones small.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the sliced celery, anchovies, mace, shallots, and carrots to the pan. Cook, stirring often, until the mixture is brown.

Make the stock

  1. Pour in enough water to cover the mixture and let it simmer for 4-5 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into another saucepan.

  3. Simmer the strained liquid until it becomes glutinous, stirring to prevent burning.

  4. Season with Cayenne pepper and salt to taste.

Set and store

  1. Pour the mixture onto dishes to a thickness of ¼ inch and let it cool.

  2. Once nearly cold, cut into cakes and pack in tin cases between writing paper.

  3. Store in a cool, dry place until needed.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Shallot + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

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

  3. Celery + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together459 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  5. Beef + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean ham
Provides rich meaty flavor and body to the stock as it simmers.
Butter
Carries flavor from the aromatics and helps them brown richly in the pan.
Veal
Its bones and meat release gelatin, giving the stock its glutinous set.
Celery
Adds savory, aromatic depth to the stock as it cooks down.
Anchovies
Melt into the stock, adding savory depth without a distinct fishy taste.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stock as they break down.

The step that matters

Simmering the strained liquid until glutinous. Reducing the stock concentrates flavor and lets its natural gelatin set when cooled. Stirring prevents the sugars and proteins from scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, beef, veal, butter, celery, shallot, carrot):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, veal, butter, celery, shallot, carrot. 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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