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Soup

Clear Soup

A clear beef soup made with stock, lean beef, vegetables, egg whites, and seasonings, strained and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Clear Soup

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the brown stock is cold and free from fat.

Make the soup

  1. In a clean, well-tinned stewpan, combine the stock, vegetables, seasonings, crushed egg shells, and whipped egg whites.

  2. Whisk together over gentle heat until just boiling, then let it simmer for about 1 hour.

  3. Strain the soup through a clean, dry cloth.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the strained soup and season to taste before serving.

  2. Optionally, add a glass of sherry, 2 teaspoons of French vinegar or lemon juice, and a pinch of castor sugar when reheating.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Celery + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean neck of beef
Gives the stock its beefy flavour and body as it simmers.
Whites and shells of 4 eggs
Egg whites and shells cling to floating particles and clarify the soup as they set.
Brown stock
Forms the base liquid, so its clarity and freedom from fat shape the final soup.

The step that matters

Bring to a gentle heat and simmer without boiling hard. Heating slowly until just boiling lets the egg whites rise and set with trapped particles. A hard boil would break up the raft and cloud the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, carrot, celery, allspice, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, carrot, celery, allspice, clove. 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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