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Brown Soup

A savory soup made with bacon, onions, browned flour, mutton liquor, allspice, cloves, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Brown Soup

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bacon into strips and slice the onions.

Make the soup

  1. In a soup pot, melt the butter with the bacon and onions, simmering until browned but not scorched.

  2. Mix the browned flour with cold water until smooth, then add to the pot and stir until very hot.

  3. Remove the fat from the top of the mutton liquor and pour it into the pot, adding pepper and parsley.

  4. Gradually stir in the liquid to avoid lumps, cover, and simmer at the back of the stove for two hours.

Serve

  1. Strain the soup into a tureen before serving.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Adds savoury fat and meaty flavour as it browns with the onions.
Butter
Carries the onions and bacon and helps them brown evenly.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a deeper, toasted flavour.
Mutton liquor
Forms the main savoury liquid that gives the soup its body and flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the onions and bacon until browned but not scorched. Browning builds deep flavour through the Maillard reaction, but scorched fat and sugars turn bitter and can taint the whole pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, allspice, clove, flour, mutton, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, allspice, clove, flour, mutton, pepper, parsley. 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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