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Amber Soup

A clear beef and veal (or fowl) broth with vegetables, herbs, and clarified with lemon rind and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Amber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef, veal (or fowl), cold water, ham or bacon, cloves, peppercorns, herbs, and salt.

  2. Add the onions, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, and celery seed.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for several hours.

Clarify and serve

  1. To clarify the soup, add the lemon rind and the whites and shells of the eggs.

  2. Strain the soup to remove solids and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shin beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the broth during long simmering.
Egg whites and shells
Bind to fine particles so they can be strained out, leaving a clear broth.
Veal knuckle or fowl
Adds body and savoury depth to the stock during simmering.

The step that matters

Clarifying with egg whites and shells. Egg whites and shells must be added to cold-to-warm broth and then left undisturbed so they can coagulate and trap cloudy particles. Stirring or boiling hard breaks the raft apart, leaving the soup murky.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, ham, onion, carrot, turnip, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, ham, onion, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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