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Clear Brown Soup

A clear soup made by simmering water with peppercorns, cloves, mace, and optional sherry, then clarified with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Clear Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Skim the surface carefully once the water is boiling.

  3. Add bruised black peppercorns, bruised Jamaica peppercorns, cloves, and mace.

  4. Simmer slowly for 5 hours.

  5. Add salt to taste and strain the soup.

  6. Remove the fat and sediment, then bring the strained soup back to a boil.

Clarify and finish

  1. If the soup is not clear, beat egg whites and crushed shells until frothy and whisk into the boiling soup.

  2. Remove from heat and cover with a thick cloth for a few minutes to clarify.

  3. Strain the soup through muslin into a tureen.

  4. Stir in ketchup, browning sauce, and sherry wine 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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Clove + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Mace + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites and crushed shells
Coagulate as they heat, trapping cloudy particles so the soup becomes clear when strained.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tangy acidity to deepen the soup's flavour.
Browning sauce
Adds colour and a deeper, caramel-like savoury flavour to the soup.
Black peppercorns
Contribute sharp, aromatic pungency that flavours the stock during long simmering.

The step that matters

Clarifying with egg whites and shells. Whisk the egg white and shell mixture into the boiling soup, then leave it undisturbed off heat. Egg proteins set as they heat and trap cloudy particles; stirring or boiling hard afterwards breaks up the raft and clouds the soup again.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, ketchup, sauce, sherry, wine, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, ketchup, sauce, sherry, wine, 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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