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Squirrel Soup

A hearty soup made from quartered squirrels, vegetables, and a butter‑flour roux, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lima beans work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 222 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Squirrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Place the quartered squirrels in a pot with salt and cold water.

  2. Cover and simmer gently on the back of the stove.

  3. Add vegetables as desired, especially corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and Lima beans.

  4. Once the meat is tender, strain the soup to remove bones.

  5. Return the soup to the pot and thicken with butter and flour mixture.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread, cut into dice, and fry in butter.

  2. Place the fried bread in a tureen and pour the hot soup over it.

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. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrels
Provide the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering and flavours the broth.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the soup and gives it a smoother body.
Bread
Fried dice soak up the hot broth and add a crisp-to-soft contrast.
Lima beans
Add starch and body to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter and flour mixture. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the butter and whisked into the hot soup so it thickens evenly without lumps. Adding it raw or too quickly can leave starchy clumps and a floury taste.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, potato, tomato, lima beans, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, potato, tomato, lima beans, butter, flour, bread. 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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