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Soup

Amber Soup

A hearty soup made with beef bone, chicken, ham, vegetables, and optional sherry, seasoned with salt, pepper, and caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Amber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef bone, chicken, ham, carrot, parsnip, parsley, bay leaf, celery, onion, and water.

  2. Simmer for 4 hours, then season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add caramel and sherry if desired, then strain through a fine cloth.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsnip + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef bone
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the water during long simmering, giving the broth body.
Chicken
Adds meaty flavor and some body to the broth during the long simmer.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky depth to the broth as it simmers.
Caramel
Adds deep brown color and a toasted, slightly sweet flavor to the soup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic richness to the finished soup.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, chicken, ham, carrot, parsley, celery, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, chicken, ham, carrot, parsley, celery, onion. 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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