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Squirrel Soup

A hearty soup made from squirrels, vegetables, and thickened with butter and flour, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lima beans work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 222 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Squirrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the squirrels

  1. Wash the squirrels and quarter them.

  2. Place the quartered squirrels in a pot with salt and cold water, cover, and simmer gently on the stove.

Make the soup

  1. Add vegetables such as corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and Lima beans.

  2. Simmer until the meat is tender.

  3. Strain the soup to remove bones and return it to the pot.

  4. Thicken the soup with butter and flour.

  5. Chop the celery leaves and parsley leaves, then add them to the soup.

Serve

  1. Toast and dice the bread, then fry the diced bread in butter.

  2. Place the fried bread in a tureen.

  3. Pour the hot soup over the fried bread.

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. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Squirrels
Provide the meat that becomes tender and flavours the broth during simmering.
Butter and flour
Thicken the soup into a richer, more body-filled broth.
Vegetables
Add sweetness, body and flavour to the broth as they cook.
Bread
Soaks up hot soup while its fried surface stays crisp, adding texture.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly, so the meat becomes tender without toughening. A rolling boil tends to toughen meat and cloud the broth.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, potato, tomato, lima beans, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, potato, tomato, lima beans, butter, flour, bread. 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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