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Soups

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the flour with enough water to make a smooth paste.

  2. Boil the mixture in the soup to remove fat.

  3. For richness, add a lump of butter mixed with flour and boil.

  4. Place the meat at the bottom of the pan and stew with herbs and butter.

  5. Allow the gravy to almost dry before adding water.

  6. To mellow strong onions, boil a turnip with them.

  7. If the soup is weak, leave it uncovered while boiling to evaporate excess water.

  8. Keep a clear jelly of cow-heels on hand to enhance soups and gravies.

  9. Wash half an ounce of truffles and morels, then simmer in water for a few minutes.

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. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, flour, butter, meat, turnip, truffle):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, flour, butter, meat, turnip, truffle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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