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Clear Amber Soup

A clear soup made from beef bone, chicken, ham, and vegetables, clarified with egg whites and shells, and colored with caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Clear Amber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine beef bone, chicken, ham, and cold water in a soup kettle.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer slowly for 4 hours.

  3. Mince and fry the onion in butter.

  4. Add minced onion, parsley, carrot, parsnip, celery, cloves, salt, and pepper to the soup.

  5. Boil for 1 hour.

  6. Strain the soup.

  7. Let it sit overnight.

  8. Remove the fat from the top the next day.

Clarify and serve

  1. Carefully take the jelly, avoiding the sediment, and mix it with egg whites and shells.

  2. Boil quickly for 1 minute.

  3. Skim carefully and strain through a bag until clear.

  4. Add caramel for color and heat just 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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 bone
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, giving the stock body.
Chicken
Adds savory flavor and gelatin to the stock during the long simmer.
Egg whites
Trap cloudy particles as they set during boiling, so they can be skimmed and strained out for clarity.
Caramel
Darkens the soup to the amber color named in the title.

The step that matters

Clarifying with egg whites. Egg whites must be mixed in cold and then brought to a boil gradually and stirred, so they coagulate around cloudy particles. Boiling too vigorously or disturbing the raft can break it up and leave the soup cloudy.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, chicken, ham, onion, butter, parsley, carrot):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, chicken, ham, onion, butter, parsley, carrot. 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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