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Bread Soup

A soup made from beef bones, stock, onion, celery, herbs, water, stale bread crusts, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bread Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Crack the bones.

  2. Chop the meat and vegetables.

  3. Put the bones, meat, and vegetables in cold water.

  4. Boil slowly until reduced to 2 quarts.

  5. Let the liquid cool.

  6. Remove the fat.

  7. Season the broth.

Make the soup

  1. Return the broth to the pot.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam.

  4. Add the bread crusts.

  5. Cover the pot.

  6. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Stir in the butter, discarding any bits that do not dissolve.

  9. Simmer in a double boiler for another 30 minutes.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Beef bones and trimmings
Release gelatin and meaty flavor into the water as they simmer, giving the broth body and savour.
Stale bread crusts
Soak up liquid and thicken the broth, giving the soup its body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor and smoothing the finished soup.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens into the broth.

The step that matters

Remove the fat before adding the bread. Fat left floating on the broth stays greasy and can make the soup taste heavy. Cooling the liquid lets the fat solidify so it can be lifted off cleanly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, bread, pepper, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, bread, pepper, butter. 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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