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Excellent Portable Soup

A hearty soup of ham, beef, veal, celery, anchovies, mace, shallots, carrots, and spices, simmered for hours and formed into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Chop the meat from the ham, beef, and veal, and chop the bones into small pieces.

Make the stock

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

  2. Add the sliced celery, anchovies, mace, shallots, and carrots to the pan.

  3. Cook, stirring often, until the mixture is browned.

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

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

Reduce and set

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

  2. Season with Cayenne pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Pour the soup into dishes, about ¼ inch thick, and let it cool.

  4. Once nearly cold, cut into cakes and store in tin cases between writing paper.

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
Adds savoury meat flavour and body to the stock.
Beef
Contributes rich meaty flavour and gelatin-rich body to the stock.
Veal
Adds gelatin from bones and meat, helping the stock set firm when cooled.
Butter
Carries flavour and browns the vegetables and meat for depth.
Celery
Provides aromatic background flavour to the stock.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook and brown.

The step that matters

Reducing until glutinous. The stock must be simmered long enough and stirred to prevent scorching. Its gelatin concentrates as water evaporates, which lets the soup set firm when cooled. Burning would give a bitter taste.

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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