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To Make Vermicelli Soup

A hearty beef broth with vermicelli, carrots, celery, onions, and seasonings, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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To Make Vermicelli Soup

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Make Vermicelli Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the beef into pieces and rub a little marrow on a hot pan.

  2. Brown the fleshy pieces of meat on both sides, then add the bony pieces, veal, and bacon.

  3. Cover and stew for 15 minutes without water.

Make the soup

  1. Add boiling water, black pepper, celery, onions, thyme, and carrots to the pot.

  2. Fill the pot with boiling water and let it boil gently for 6 hours without stirring.

  3. Strain enough soup to fill a tureen, then refill the pot with boiling water.

  4. Boil quickly for 2 hours until reduced to another tureen-full.

  5. Skim off the fat from the first drawn soup and put it in a clean pan.

  6. Boil the soup for 1 hour to refine it.

Finish and serve

  1. Cook the vermicelli until tender, strain it, and add it to the soup.

  2. Let it boil for 15 minutes before serving.

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.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,188 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,001 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Gives the soup its meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour into the broth.
Bacon or ham
Adds savoury, smoky depth to the broth.
Onions
Build sweetness and aroma as they cook into the broth.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the broth.
Vermicelli
Adds starchy body and texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 6 hours without stirring. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear, while vigorous boiling or stirring emulsifies fat and clouds the soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatoabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, ham, pepper, celery, thyme, carrot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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