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Hasty Soup

A soup made from finely chopped cold meat, butter, water, fried bread, and walnut catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hasty Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped meat, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add 2 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil slowly.

  3. Once boiling, cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a thin cloth.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the broth with browned flour and add the walnut catsup.

  2. Bring to a boil again and pour over the fried bread in a tureen.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Gives the soup its main meaty flavor and body as it cooks into the broth.
Browned flour
Thickens the broth so it has more body and a richer, toasted flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the broth, carrying flavor.
Walnut catsup
Adds a dark, savory, slightly tangy depth to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Bringing the water to a boil slowly. Heating the meat gently in cold water lets its flavor and juices draw out into the liquid. Rapid boiling can toughen the meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, bread, 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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