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Hodge-podge Soup

A hearty soup made with assorted meats, vegetables, and herbs simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hodge-podge Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the meat over low heat in enough water to cover it well.

  2. Add onions, carrots, parsley, parsnips, turnips, green shallots, garlic, allspice, thyme, and basil.

  3. Once cooked, drain the meat and place it on a serving dish.

  4. Sift the broth through a sieve.

  5. Skim the broth.

Glaze and serve

  1. Reduce some of the broth to a glaze if desired.

  2. Glaze the meat with the reduced broth.

  3. Add gravy and enough broth to create a sauce.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

  5. Serve over the meat.

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. Parsnip + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef, mutton, steaks, whole pigeons, rabbits, veal, or poultry
Provides the meat that flavours the broth and is served as the main dish.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Parsnips
Add earthy sweetness and thicken the broth slightly as they break down.
Turnips
Add mild, slightly peppery flavour and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Skim the broth. Fat and foam rise to the surface as the meat simmers. Skimming them off keeps the broth clear and stops the sauce from tasting greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, carrot, parsley, parsnip, turnip, shallot):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, carrot, parsley, parsnip, turnip, shallot. 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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