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Clear Beetroot Soup

A clear soup made from beetroot, stock, onion, celery, egg whites, sherry, and spices, garnished with steamed egg white and savory cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 652 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Clear Beetroot Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently to clarify the soup, similar to making consommé.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with the steamed egg white cut into fancy shapes.

  2. Serve with whipped savory cream.

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. Beetroot + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beetroot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,261 recipes

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

  4. Celery + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Coagulate as the soup simmers, trapping solids to clarify the broth into a clear liquid.
Raw beetroot
Provides the earthy flavor and deep red color of the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavors.
Sherry
Adds a fortified wine flavor and mild acidity to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Boiling vigorously breaks up the egg white raft and clouds the soup, so it must simmer gently to stay clear while the egg whites trap the solids.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, egg, sherry, cream):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, egg, sherry, cream. 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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