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Sago Soup

A beef broth thickened with sago pearls, seasoned with onion, parsley, carrots, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sago Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Simmer 2 pounds of meat and bone in 2 quarts of cold water with 1 onion, parsley, and carrots for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Let the stock cool and remove the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Reheat the stock and add 1 tablespoon of sago for every quart of stock.

  2. Season to taste and add a few drops of lemon juice.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Beef meat and bone
Long simmering releases flavour and gelatin, giving the stock body.
Sago
Starch that thickens the hot stock as it softens and turns translucent.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic sweetness to the stock as it simmers.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and aroma to the simmering stock.

The step that matters

Removing the fat after cooling. Once the stock cools, fat rises and solidifies on the surface, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Skipping this leaves the soup greasy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, onion, parsley, carrot):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, onion, parsley, 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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