Skip to main content
Main

Clear Soup

A clear soup made with grease, egg white, gelatin, colored water, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Clear Soup

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the stock

  1. Skim the grease from the soup-jelly in the crock, leaving meat and sediment behind.

  2. Heat the grease in a soup kettle until it boils.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg white.

  4. Remove the scum as it rises.

  5. Add the soaked gelatin.

  6. Add a little boiling water to the sediment and meat in the pot.

  7. Strain off the liquid.

  8. Ensure the meat is clean before adding it back to the soup.

Colour and finish

  1. Prepare colored water by burning sugar.

  2. Add boiling water to the colored water.

  3. Stir until clear.

  4. Add the colored water to the soup.

  5. Simmer for a few minutes without boiling.

  6. Serve with sliced lemon.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Beaten egg white
Gathers impurities and clouds as it cooks, so they can be removed, clearing the soup.
Coxe's gelatine
Adds body and a light jelly-like texture to the soup.
Colored water (made from burning sugar)
Adds a brown colour to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer for a few minutes without boiling. Boiling a clarifying soup breaks up the egg white raft and cloudies the broth, so it should only simmer gently.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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.

More clear soup recipes

Stock 33Beef 3 See all 53 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes