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Soup Maigre , or Vegetable Soup

A lean vegetable soup made with giblets, butter, flour, and mushroom catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Soup Maigre , or Vegetable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the giblets

  1. Cook the giblets in water for 1.5 to 2.5 hours until tender.

  2. Remove the giblets and keep them warm in a tureen.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a clean stewpan and stir in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the giblet liquor, stirring continuously.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes while stirring.

  4. Skim off any foam.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a basin.

  6. Wash out the stewpan and pour the soup back in.

  7. Season with mushroom catsup and coarse sea salt.

  8. Bring to a boil, then add the giblets back in.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the flavour and, with flour, forms the base of the thickened soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by forming a roux with the melted butter.
Giblets
Provide the main meat and rich flavour of the soup.
Giblet liquor
Carries the cooked giblet flavour and becomes the body of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the liquor to the roux. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour smooth. Dumping it in at once can leave lumps that are hard to remove later.

“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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