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Portable Soup

A broth made from veal, beef, and onions, cooled, thickened, formed into cakes, dried, and stored for later use.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Portable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the veal, shins of beef, and beef in enough water to cover them.

  2. Remove the marrow from the bones and add spices and onions.

  3. Once the meat is in fragments, strain it and place it in a cold area.

  4. After cooling, remove the fat and place the soup in a double-bottomed saucepan.

  5. Heat the soup on a quick fire, boiling uncovered and stirring constantly for 8 hours.

Set and dry

  1. Let it cool for a day, then pour it into a round china soup dish.

  2. Set the dish in a stew-pan of boiling water and stir until the soup thickens.

  3. Pour the thickened soup into upside-down cups or basins to form cakes and let them dry on flannel.

  4. Store the cakes in tin canisters.

Use

  1. To use, melt the cakes in boiling water, adding herbs or other flavors if desired.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  5. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckles
Release gelatin and body into the broth as they simmer, helping it set later.
Beef shins
Add collagen-rich connective tissue that turns into gelatin, giving the soup body.
Beef
Provides meaty flavor and protein that the long simmer concentrates.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Long, constant stirring while boiling uncovered. Reducing the stock for hours concentrates it into a thick, gelatinous base. Constant stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would give a burnt flavor and ruin the batch.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, meat):

  1. Onionthe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Carrotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, meat. 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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