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Halifax Soup

A bone broth soup with tomatoes, carrots, onion, potatoes, seasoned with salt and pepper and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Halifax Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Place the meat bone in a pot with 3 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim off any impurities that rise to the surface.

  3. Add the chopped tomatoes, carrots, onion, and potatoes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Once the vegetables are tender, strain the soup and return the liquid to the pot.

  6. Bring the soup back to a boil and thicken with a little flour.

Serve

  1. Before serving, add a few parsley leaves for garnish.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 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

Meat bone
Releases savory flavor and body into the broth as it simmers.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh, tangy flavor to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and soften to give the soup body.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth to the broth as it cooks.
Irish potatoes
Break down partly as they cook, adding starch and body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the broth, giving it a heavier, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump. Whisking it smooth with a little cold liquid first, then returning the soup to a boil, lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the broth without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, tomato, carrot, potato, pepper, flour, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, tomato, carrot, potato, pepper, flour, parsley. 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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