Skip to main content
Main

Pork Soup

A clear broth made from pork bones, seasoned with pepper seeds, horseradish, mace, and turnip, thickened with rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Horseradish and turnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 48 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pork Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place pork bones in a pot of cold salted water.

  2. Put pepper seeds, horseradish, mace, and sliced turnip in a cheesecloth bag.

  3. Add the bag to the pot.

  4. Boil as you would for beef soup.

  5. Strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 1 teaspoon of rice flour for each pint.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil again.

  3. Serve with crackers.

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. Horseradish + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Turnip + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork bones
Release flavor and body into the broth as they simmer.
Rice flour
Thickens the soup slightly as it heats.
Turnip
Adds mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavor to the broth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, horseradish, turnip, rice, flour. 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipes