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Soups and Broths

A savory soup made with ham, anchovies, carrots, onions, mushrooms, herbs, and consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Soups and Broths

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large stew pan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the diced ham, carrots, onions, and sliced mushrooms; sauté for a few minutes.

  3. Add the anchovies, parsley, thyme, basil, marjoram, rosemary, savory, bay leaves, cloves, cayenne pepper, allspice, mace, long pepper, and white pepper.

  4. Pour in the consommé and simmer the mixture over low heat for 3 hours.

  5. After simmering, strain the mixture through a fine sieve to remove solids.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  4. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to cook the vegetables and ham gently and carry the aromatics' flavour.
Ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the broth during the long simmer.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoury depth and body to the soup base.
Anchovies
Contribute deep savoury umami that rounds out the broth without an obvious fishy taste.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base that carries and extracts flavour during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmering over low heat for 3 hours. Long, gentle simmering slowly extracts flavour from the herbs, spices and anchovies. Boiling instead can make the broth cloudy and turn the flavours harsh or bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, mushroom, ham, parsley, thyme, basil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, mushroom, ham, parsley, thyme, basil. 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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