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A Baked Soup

A baked soup made with meat, onions, carrots, rice, split peas, pepper, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Baked Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into slices.

  2. Chop the onions and carrots.

  3. In an earthen jug or pan, combine the meat, onions, carrots, rice, peas, pepper, and salt.

Bake

  1. Pour in 1 gallon of water and cover tightly.

  2. Bake alongside bread until cooked through.

  3. Use leftover meat and bones from meals to enhance the soup's flavor.

  4. Add any available vegetables, cut small, to the soup before serving.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main savory flavor and body of the broth as it cooks.
Split peas
Thicken the soup as they soften, adding body and earthy flavor.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and softens, adding bulk and thickening the soup.
Onions
Build savory depth and aroma as they soften in the broth.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and color while softening in the liquid.

The step that matters

Cover tightly before baking. A tight cover keeps steam and moisture in the jug, so the liquid does not evaporate and the meat and peas cook evenly and become tender over the long, gentle heat.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, carrot, rice, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, carrot, rice, pepper. 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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