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Amber Soup

A clear soup made from a soup bone, chicken, ham, vegetables, herbs, and spices, finished with egg whites, burnt sugar, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 214 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Amber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the soup bone for 4 hours with the chicken and ham.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, celery, parsley, summer savory, thyme, cloves, pepper, and salt, then boil for 1 hour longer.

  3. Strain into an earthen bowl and let it sit overnight.

Clarify and finish

  1. Remove the fat and jelly without disturbing the sediment.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg whites and their shells, boil for 1 minute, then skim well.

  3. Run the soup through a jelly bag.

  4. Color with burnt sugar and season with sherry wine 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.

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. Summer savory + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Parsley + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 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

Egg whites
Coagulate and trap suspended particles, clarifying the broth into a clear soup.
Soup bone
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the broth during the long simmer.
Whole chicken
Adds meaty flavor and body to the broth during simmering.
Burnt sugar
Adds deep amber color and a slightly bitter, caramel note.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites and boiling for 1 minute. Egg white proteins coagulate as they heat and trap cloudy particles, forming a raft that clarifies the broth. Stirring or boiling too hard breaks up the raft and returns the cloudiness to the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, carrot, celery, parsley, summer savory, thyme):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, carrot, celery, parsley, summer savory, thyme. 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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