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Mammy Silvy's Noodle Soup

A hearty soup made with soup bone, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, parsley, onion, rice, okra, and noodles or vermicelli.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Mammy Silvy's Noodle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the soup bone in 4 quarts of cold water and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Add tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, parsley, onion, rice, okra, salt, and pepper.

  3. Boil for 2-3 hours, then remove and strain the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the broth to the stove and add noodles or vermicelli.

  2. Boil until the noodles are tender.

  3. Serve with whole skinned tomatoes in each bowl and pour the soup over them.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soup bone
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water, giving the broth body and savoriness.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh, tangy flavor that brightens the broth.
Okra
Releases natural thickening compounds that give the broth a slightly silky body.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding starch and body to the soup.
Noodles or vermicelli
Add starch and chewy texture that soaks up broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Strain the broth before adding the noodles. Straining removes the bone, solids and loose particles so the broth stays clear. Noodles added to the full pot would keep absorbing liquid and turn soft and cloudy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, potato, carrot, parsley, rice, okra, 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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