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Oatmeal Soup, with Ham

A hearty soup made with steel cut oats, ham, potatoes, celery, onion, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oatmeal Soup, with Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the oats with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil in a large pot.

  3. Add the salt, celery, parsley, onion, and potatoes.

  4. Wash the bacon or ham and parboil it in water for 10 minutes.

Cook and strain

  1. Add the parboiled bacon or ham to the soup and boil for about 2 hours.

  2. Mash and strain the soup to remove solids.

Thicken and finish

  1. Skim off the grease and mix it with flour.

  2. Gradually add the strained soup to the flour mixture and let it boil for a few minutes.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Celery + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Steel cut oats
Thicken the soup and give it a hearty, porridge-like body as they cook.
Potatoes
Break down when mashed and help thicken and give the soup body.
Bacon or ham
Adds fat and smoky, savory flavor to the broth as it simmers.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor as it softens in the broth.

The step that matters

Gradually add the strained soup to the flour mixture. Adding hot liquid to flour all at once forms lumps because the starch clumps before it can disperse. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps the mixture smooth and lets it thicken evenly as it boils.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oats, celery, parsley, potato, ham):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oats, celery, parsley, potato, ham. 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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