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Vermicelli Soup

A simple soup made with poultry stock, saffron, mace, pepper, salt, vermicelli, and optional cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Vermicelli Soup

Why it works: Saffron and pepper work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 781 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vermicelli Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Make stock from poultry until done.

  2. Add saffron, mace, pepper, salt, and vermicelli.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Adjust seasoning with red cayenne pepper 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.

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.

  1. Saffron + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Turkey + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,636 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turkey + macetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together254 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Saffron + macetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Poultry
Provides the meat and the body of the stock that forms the soup base.
Vermicelli
Thin pasta that softens in the broth and gives the soup its body and bite.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, mace, 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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