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Olla Podrida, or Spanish National Soup

A hearty Spanish stew of beef, hen, ham, partridges, sausages, savaloys, and vegetables simmered in water with cloves and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Olla Podrida, or Spanish National Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Place slices of raw ham at the bottom of a stockpot.

  2. Add gravy beef and the roasted hen.

  3. Garnish with vegetables, cloves, and mace.

  4. Moisten with 1 quart of water and set the stockpot on the fire.

Braise

  1. Reduce the broth to a glaze, then fill it up with water when it boils.

  2. Skim the broth and let it boil gently by the side of the stove.

  3. After 2 hours, add the large fowl, partridges, sausages, and savaloys.

  4. Monitor the braising to prevent overcooking, then remove when done.

Finish and serve

  1. Cool the meats, then cut the fowl and partridges into small pieces.

  2. Cut the sausages and savaloys into small round balls.

  3. Combine all meats in a soup pot with carrots, turnips, celery, and leeks.

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. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Becomes tender and flavours the broth as it braises slowly.
Roasted hen
Adds rich, savoury flavour to the broth during long simmering.
Raw ham
Lends salty, savoury depth to the broth as it cooks.
Partridges
Contribute lean, delicate meat that cooks through in the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Monitor the braising to prevent overcooking. Gentle, steady simmering keeps meat tender and the broth clear. A hard boil toughens proteins and makes the broth cloudy, and small birds dry out quickly if left too long.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, clove, pork, carrot, olive, turnip):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, clove, pork, carrot, olive, turnip. 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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