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A Clear Soup

A clear soup made from beef, veal, vegetables, eggs, and a gelatinous broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut up the beef and veal and boil them in 10 quarts of water all day, skimming well.

  2. Add the white peppercorns, mace, and bay leaves, keeping the pot covered to reduce water loss to about 5 quarts.

  3. Strain the soup into a stone jar and let it cool overnight.

  4. Remove the fat the next day; you will have a strong jelly.

Add the vegetables and eggs

  1. Two hours before serving, chop the carrots, turnips, and onions, cover with hot water, and steep for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the vegetable water into the soup pot and add the jelly; let it boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Beat the eggs and stir them in; let it boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Keep the soup hot without boiling, adding 1 cup of cold water.

  5. Season with essence of celery or cloves as desired.

  6. Strain the soup through a flannel bag.

  7. Reheat if cooled, and serve very hot, adding white wine to the tureen if desired.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 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

Beef shin
Breaks down into gelatin during long simmering, giving the stock body and a jelly-like set.
Veal shin
Adds collagen that turns into gelatin, giving the clear stock a rich, full mouthfeel.
Eggs
Coagulate as they heat, trapping particles that are then strained out to clarify the soup.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth to the stock as they steep and simmer.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs into the hot soup. Egg whites coagulate and form a raft that traps cloudy particles, clarifying the broth. If the soup is boiling hard or the eggs are stirred in unevenly, the raft breaks up and the soup stays cloudy, so keep the heat gentle and the stirring light.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, carrot, turnip, onion, egg, white wine):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, carrot, turnip, onion, egg, white wine. 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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