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Pepper Pot

A hearty soup made with veal, tripe, potatoes, and spices, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pepper Pot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tripe and veal

  1. Wash the tripe in cold water and boil it in a kettle with cold water for eight hours; cook this a day before serving.

  2. In a soup kettle, place the knuckle of veal, cover with water, bring to a simmer, and skim carefully.

  3. Simmer gently for three hours, then strain and return the soup to the kettle.

Build the soup

  1. Cut the potatoes into dice and add them along with the chopped parsley, thyme, chopped red pepper, and bay leaf to the soup.

  2. Cut the tripe into one-inch pieces and the meat from the knuckle into small pieces; add these to the soup.

  3. Bring the soup to a boil and season with salt and cayenne.

  4. Rub the butter and flour together, then stir into the boiling soup.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. For the dumplings, chop the suet finely, measure it, and mix with double the amount of flour and a quarter teaspoon of salt.

  2. Moisten the mixture with about ¼ cup of ice water, form into tiny dumplings the size of marbles, and add to the soup.

  3. Cook the dumplings in the soup for fifteen minutes 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tripe
Provides the chewy texture that defines the soup after long, slow boiling.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the dumplings and keeps them tender and moist.
Flour
Thickens the boiling soup and gives body to the broth when rubbed with butter.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding starch and body to the soup.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the water during long simmering.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the boiling soup. Stirring the rubbed butter and flour into boiling liquid can clump if not dispersed well. Rubbing them together first coats the flour in fat, which helps it blend smoothly and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, parsley, pepper, potato, flour, thyme):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, parsley, pepper, potato, flour, thyme. 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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