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Sago Soup

A hearty beef soup thickened with sago.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 ↓

Sago Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a stewpan, combine the beef, ham, and butter. Cook gently to draw out the gravy.

  2. Add 2 quarts of water and the sliced onion, which has been browned in butter.

  3. Include the sweet herbs, cloves, mace, allspice, and black pepper.

  4. Stew until the soup is rich and brown.

Strain and thicken

  1. Remove the meat and strain the soup to make it clear.

  2. Return the soup to a clean stewpan and thicken it with sago to a good consistency.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Lean beef
Provides the main meaty flavour and gravy as it cooks gently in the stock.
Sago
Thickens the strained soup as its starch swells with heat, giving body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the onion for deeper colour and flavour.
Sliced onion
Browned in butter, it adds savoury sweetness and colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Thicken with sago to a good consistency. Sago starch swells and thickens as it heats, so adding it too early or boiling too hard can make the soup gluey or cloudy. Add it gradually and stop once the desired body is reached.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, butter, onion, clove, allspice, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, butter, onion, clove, allspice, pepper. 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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