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Amber Soup

A beef and veal bone soup with onions, carrot, celery essence, egg, tapioca, and burnt sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Amber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Cut the meat into strips.

  2. In a soup pot, melt the butter and add the meat. Let it heat slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Increase the heat and stir until the meat is glazed with a brown crust.

  4. Add 1 quart of cold water and bring to a boil.

Make the stock

  1. Fry the onions and carrot in dripping until browned, then drain the fat.

  2. Add the vegetables to the boiling meat and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the remaining cold water, minced ham, and broken veal bones. Boil slowly for 4 hours, then strain.

  4. Place the meat and bones in a stone vessel and pour half the soup over them for later.

  5. Return the rest to the pot, season, and bring to a boil.

Clarify and finish

  1. Skim off any fat and scum.

  2. Add the egg white and shell, boil for 3 minutes, then remove from heat and pour into a broad pan to cool.

  3. Burn 2 tablespoons of sugar in a tin cup on the hot range. Once liquid, pour in ½ cup of boiling water and let it stand.

  4. When the soup is cool, remove all fat and scum, return to the pot, boil, and strain in the sugar-water.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

Lean beef
Browning the meat builds deep savoury flavour in the stock.
Veal bones
Long simmering draws gelatin from the bones, giving the soup body.
Egg white
As it cooks it gathers fine particles, helping the soup become clear.
Butter
Fat carries the browning of the meat and adds rich flavour.
Burnt sugar
Caramelised sugar gives the soup its amber colour and a toasty aroma.

The step that matters

Boil the egg white and shell gently. The egg white and shell trap cloudy particles as they set. A hard, rolling boil breaks up this raft and leaves the soup murky, so keep the heat low once the egg is in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, veal, carrot, celery, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, veal, carrot, celery, pepper, egg. 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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