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Soups and Broths

A savory soup made from giblet liquor, Port wine, mushroom catsup, orange juice, and a pinch of cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Soups and Broths

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Lift out the giblets with a skimmer or spoon into a tureen and keep covered by the fire.

  2. Melt the butter in a clean saucepan, stir in enough flour to make a paste.

  3. Gradually pour in a ladleful of giblet liquor, stirring continuously, then add the rest and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Skim and strain the soup through a fine sieve into a bowl.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the soup to the saucepan, add Port wine, mushroom catsup, and salt.

  2. Bring to a boil, add the giblets to heat, and serve.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the flavour and helps form the flour paste that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the giblet liquor into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup.
Giblet liquor
Provides the main meaty stock base of the soup.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the soup.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the giblet liquor while stirring. Adding liquid slowly to the butter and flour roux while stirring constantly keeps it smooth; dumping it in at once forms lumps that are hard to remove.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, port wine, mushroom, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, port wine, mushroom, sugar. 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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