Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Vermicelli Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the stock
Combine stock, bacon, butter, and fowl in a large pot and stew for 1 hour.
Add vermicelli to a portion of the stock and cook until tender.
Assemble and serve
Remove the fowl and bacon from the pot and place the bacon on a dish.
Skim the soup to remove impurities.
Pour the soup with the vermicelli over the fowl.
Serve with thinly sliced bread.
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.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- White stock
- Provides the liquid base and most of the soup's flavor.
- Vermicelli
- Thin pasta that softens in the broth and adds body through its starch.
- Fowl
- Releases flavor and gelatin into the stock during the long stew, adding body.
- Bacon
- Its fat and salt season the stock with savory, smoky flavor.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the broth.
The step that matters
Cook the vermicelli until just tender. Thin pasta keeps absorbing liquid and turns soft and mushy if left too long. Cooking it only until tender keeps its texture in the finished soup.
“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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