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Portuguese Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, pickled pork, pumpkin, cabbage, carrots, turnips, onions, tomatoes, herbs, spices, bread, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Portuguese Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine water, beef, pickled pork, and all vegetables except the reserved pumpkin and cabbage hearts in a large pot.

  2. Add herbs, celery, cloves, mace, salt, and pepper.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for about 4 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Cut the reserved pumpkin into pieces about 5 inches long and 3 inches square, and set aside.

  2. When the soup is nearly cooked, add the reserved pumpkin pieces and cabbage hearts.

  3. Fry the tomatoes and onions in a separate pan until browned, then add them to the soup.

Serve

  1. Place broken pieces of bread in a soup tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the bread.

  3. Top with grated cheese.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Releases flavor and body into the broth during the long simmer.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savory depth to the broth as it simmers.
Pumpkin
Softens into the broth and adds sweetness and body.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a mild, earthy flavor to the soup.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and savory depth once browned with the onions.
Onions
Browning adds sweetness and savory depth to the soup.

The step that matters

Frying the tomatoes and onions until browned. Browning caramelizes the onion's natural sugars and concentrates the tomato, building deeper flavor than simmering alone would give. Under-browned pieces taste flat and raw.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, cabbage, carrot, turnip, onion, tomato):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, cabbage, carrot, turnip, onion, tomato. 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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