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Pork Soup, or Jelly

A clear pork broth made by simmering a pork leg, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, served hot or chilled as jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pork Soup, or Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up and break the bone of the leg of pork.

Simmer and season

  1. Simmer it gently in 3 gallons of water until the liquid is reduced to 1 gallon.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the liquid.

  2. Serve as soup or let it cool to eat as jelly.

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. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Pork + nutmegtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,825 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of pork
Bone and connective tissue release flavor and gelatin into the water as it simmers.
Water
Extracts flavor and gelatin from the pork and becomes the broth as it reduces.

The step that matters

Simmer it gently. A gentle simmer extracts flavor and gelatin without churning fat into the liquid. A hard boil emulsifies fat and clouds the broth, and it can also toughen meat proteins.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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