Skip to main content
Main

Turkey Soup

A clear soup made from a turkey carcass, celery, salt, and vermicelli or dried corn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Turkey Soup

Why it works: Celery and corn work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 920 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Turkey Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Break up the turkey carcass and cover it with cold water.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours with the chopped celery.

  3. Strain the broth and season to taste.

Finish the soup

  1. Bring the broth to a boil again and add the vermicelli or noodles.

  2. Serve when the noodles are cooked, or use dried corn instead.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Turkey + celerytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turkey + corntop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Turkey carcass
Releases collagen and flavour into the water, giving the broth body and savouriness.
Cold water
Extracts flavour from the carcass slowly as it heats, producing a clearer broth.
Vermicelli or noodles
Adds starch and bulk, soaking up broth and giving the soup a more substantial texture.

The step that matters

Simmer for 2 hours with the chopped celery. Keeping the broth at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil extracts flavour and gelatin while keeping the liquid clear. Boiling vigorously emulsifies fat into the broth and makes it cloudy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, corn):

  1. Sagefits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Basilfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, corn. 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.

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipes