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Squirrel Soup

Squirrel Soup is a hearty broth made from squirrels, vegetables, and butter, served with fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Squirrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the squirrels

  1. Wash and quarter the squirrels.

  2. Place them in a pot with ½ teaspoon of salt and 1 gallon of cold water.

  3. Cover the pot and simmer gently on the back of the stove.

Make the soup

  1. Add vegetables like corn, Irish potatoes, tomatoes, and Lima beans.

  2. Strain the soup through a coarse colander when the meat has boiled to shreds.

  3. Return the strained soup to the pot and boil for a while longer.

  4. Thicken the soup with 2 tablespoons of butter rubbed in 2 tablespoons of flour.

  5. Add celery salt and chopped parsley to taste.

Serve

  1. Toast 2 slices of bread, cut them into ½ inch squares, 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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 cooks down to flavour the broth.
Butter and flour
Rubbed together to thicken the soup, giving it body as it heats.
Irish potatoes
Add starch and body to the soup as they cook through.
Bread
Fried in butter to become crisp croutons that hold up in the hot soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter and flour. Rubbing the butter into the flour before adding it lets the flour disperse without lumps, and the soup must be kept hot and stirred so the starch swells evenly and thickens smoothly.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, potato, tomato, butter, flour, celery, parsley):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, potato, tomato, butter, flour, celery, parsley. 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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