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Sago Soup

A beef broth thickened with sago and flavored with onion, parsley, carrots, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sago Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Simmer 2 pounds of beef with bone in 2 quarts cold water with 1 onion, parsley, and carrots for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Let the stock cool and skim off the fat.

Finish the soup

  1. Reheat the stock and add 1 tablespoon sago per quart of stock.

  2. Season to taste and add a few drops lemon juice.

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

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

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef with bone
Long simmering releases flavour and gelatin into the water, giving the stock body.
Sago
Starch that thickens the hot stock as it swells and turns the soup slightly glossy.
Carrots
Sweetness and body that season the stock as it simmers.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, 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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