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Soup

Saco Soup

Saco Soup is a lamb bone broth with pearl sago, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Saco Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all the meat from the cold leg of lamb and crack the bones into splinters.

Make the broth

  1. Put the meat, skin, and gristly bits into 3 quarts of water with the onion and boil slowly until reduced to 1 quart.

  2. Strain the broth, cool it, and skim off the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the saved broth from the mock-turtle stock made on Saturday.

  2. Heat the mixture and stir in the soaked pearl sago.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then simmer for 30 minutes.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lamb + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,407 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold leg of lamb
Supplies the meat, skin, and bones that give the broth its flavor and body.
Pearl sago
Its starch swells and thickens the hot liquid as it cooks.
Onion
Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stirring in the soaked pearl sago. Sago starch must be stirred into hot liquid so it disperses evenly; added to a cool or unstirred mixture, the grains clump together and thicken unevenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, nutmeg. 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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