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Amber Soup

A chicken broth with vegetables, egg white, and optional caramel for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Amber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the chicken, water, and soup bone in a large pot.

  2. Boil slowly for 4 hours.

  3. Add the onion with cloves, carrot, parsley, and celery.

  4. Cook for another hour.

  5. Strain the soup into a large bowl.

Clarify and finish

  1. Refrigerate overnight to remove grease.

  2. Once chilled, remove the jellied stock and any sediment.

  3. Bring the stock to a boil.

  4. Skim off any impurities.

  5. Add the beaten egg white with the shell.

  6. Carefully skim off the egg white.

  7. Strain the soup through a fine strainer.

  8. Heat the soup before serving.

  9. Add caramel for a richer color if desired.

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

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Gives the stock its meaty flavor and body as it simmers.
Soup bone
Releases gelatin and marrow flavor, giving the stock a jellied body when chilled.
Egg white
Its proteins trap sediment and cloudy particles as they set, clarifying the stock.
Onion
Adds sweet, savory aromatic depth to the stock during long simmering.
Caramel
Deepens the soup's color without changing its basic flavor much.

The step that matters

Boil slowly, not hard, and skim before clarifying. A vigorous boil emulsifies fat and breaks the stock cloudy, while gentle simmering keeps it clear. Skimming removes impurities that would otherwise cloud the finished soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, carrot, parsley, celery, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, carrot, parsley, celery, egg. 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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