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Dripping Soup

A barley and oatmeal soup made with drippings, celery, onion, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dripping Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Wash the barley.

  2. Boil the barley in 6 quarts of water over low heat. Skim the surface.

  3. Reduce the liquid to about 5 quarts.

Add the vegetables and thicken

  1. Add the celery (or celery seed) and onion.

  2. Boil for another hour until reduced to 1 gallon.

  3. In a bowl, mix the oatmeal with the drippings. Gradually add this mixture to the soup.

Season and finish

  1. Stir in the soup-herb powder, black pepper, and salt. Let it boil for a few minutes until well combined.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Barley + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,166 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Barley
Softens as it simmers, releasing starch that gives the soup body and substance.
Oatmeal
Adds starch that thickens the broth and gives it a heartier, creamier texture.
Drippings
Supply fat that carries flavour and adds richness and a savoury depth to the soup.
Onion
Releases sugars and aromatic compounds as it cooks, adding sweetness and savoury background flavour.
Celery
Contributes aromatic compounds that add a fresh, vegetal background flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the oatmeal and drippings mixture. Adding the oatmeal mixture all at once can clump it into lumps. Mixing it with fat first and adding it gradually lets the starch disperse evenly so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, celery, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, celery, pepper. 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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