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A soup made with lean fresh meat, bones, water, pepper, salt, cooked vegetables, tapioca or rice, and served with yolks, poached eggs, lemon slices, or croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine meat and bones in a pot with water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim off the foam that rises to the surface.

  4. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 hours.

  5. Strain the soup into a jar to cool.

Finish the soup

  1. Add pepper and salt to the soup.

  2. Fry onions in butter until brown.

  3. Add the fried onions to the soup.

  4. Add cooked vegetables, tapioca, or rice to the soup.

Serve

  1. Place yolks, poached eggs, lemon slices, or croutons in bowls.

  2. Pour the soup over the items in the bowls.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean fresh meat
Gives the broth its main meaty flavour as it simmers in water.
Bones
Add body and savoury depth to the broth during the long simmer.
Butter
Browns the onions, adding nutty, toasty flavour to the soup.
Tapioca or rice
Adds body and a starchy, filling texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Skim off the foam. Foam that rises at the start contains proteins and impurities. Removing it keeps the broth clear and free of off, bitter flavours.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, rice, butter, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, rice, butter, 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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