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Soups, Broths, Purees

A thickened soup made with ham, head meat, bones, vegetables, herbs, and spices, served with head pieces and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Soups, Broths, Purees

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Discard the water and place the ham, vegetables, herbs, head, and bones into 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and cloves.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim, and then simmer for 5 hours.

  4. Remove the head.

Prepare the thickening

  1. In a small saucepan, mix 1 ounce of butter and 2 ounces of flour.

  2. Allow the flour to brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the soup to remove bones and vegetables.

  2. Stir in the thickening.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Cut nice pieces to serve in the soup.

  5. Pour into a tureen over the pieces of head.

  6. Serve forcemeat balls with the soup, either in it or separately.

  7. Serve separately with parsley and butter or thick brown sauce.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the soup when browned in butter and stirred in.
Butter
Enriches the thickening and adds richness when browned with the flour.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty meat flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Allow the flour to brown. Flour cooked in butter must be browned evenly and gently; if it is underdone it tastes raw and starchy, and if scorched it turns bitter. Browning also adds a nutty, toasted flavour and colour to the thickening.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, meat, pepper, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, meat, pepper, butter, flour. 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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