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Vermicelli Soup

A broth of veal, fowl, ham, carrots, onions, garlic, peppercorns, and spices served with vermicelli.

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

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,058 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Vermicelli Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the vermicelli and squeeze it to break it slightly to prevent it from clumping.

  2. Season the vermicelli with coarse sea salt.

Make the broth

  1. Chop the veal into pieces and place it in a saucepan with the fowl, carrots, onions, ham, peppercorns, spices, and garlic.

  2. Stew the mixture over medium heat, shaking it frequently until it turns brown.

  3. Add hot water to cover the meat by 4 inches and bring to a gentle boil.

  4. Simmer until the meat separates from the bones.

  5. Strain the broth through a fine sieve and set aside for use.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,930 recipes

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

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Vermicelli
Forms the body of the soup and absorbs broth flavor as it cooks.
Veal
Releases gelatin and savory flavor into the broth during long simmering.
Fowl
Adds deep poultry flavor and body to the broth.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky depth to the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they brown and simmer into the broth.

The step that matters

Stewing until brown. Shaking the mixture over medium heat lets the meat and onions brown evenly. Browning builds the Maillard flavors that give the broth its color and depth, while scorching would make it bitter.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, onion, ham, garlic):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, onion, ham, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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