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A Cheap Palatable Meat Soup

A hearty soup made with meat bones, beans, vegetables, and a thickening mixture of egg and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Cheap Palatable Meat Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Save all bones and trimmings from meat.

  2. Store them in a cool place for several days.

Make the broth

  1. In a kettle, combine bones, cold water, dry beans, and tomato (or barley).

  2. Cook gently for 2 hours, then strain through a colander.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the liquid to the kettle and add diced carrot, diced potatoes, sliced onion, salt, and soup powder.

  2. In 15 minutes, beat the egg with flour and stir into the soup.

  3. Let boil for 10 minutes and serve.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bones and trimmings
Release flavor and body into the water as they simmer for hours.
Dry beans
Add starch and body, thickening the broth as they soften.
Potatoes
Release starch as they cook, giving the soup a fuller texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Egg
Binds the flour into a batter that sets into soft pieces and adds richness.
Tomato
Adds acidity and mellow sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Beating the egg and flour before stirring it in. Flour added to hot liquid clumps unless it is first beaten smooth with the egg. Starch that is evenly dispersed thickens the soup uniformly, while lumps stay raw and pasty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, tomato, carrot, potato, egg, flour):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, carrot, potato, egg, flour. 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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