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Meat Soups

A curry-flavored meat soup made with bone broth, onions, curry powder, cayenne pepper, and Harvey's sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and turmeric are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,478 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Meat Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Stew the bones from the head and heel for several hours.

  2. Strain the broth, let it cool, and remove the fat.

Fry the meat and onions

  1. Slice the meat from the bones and fry in butter.

  2. Slice the onions, flour them, and fry in butter until brown.

  3. Add curry powder, cayenne pepper, and salt to the onions.

Simmer and serve

  1. Combine the onion mixture with the broth and boil gently for 1½ hours.

  2. Stir in Harvey's sauce and serve.

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. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Onion + turmerictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and brown to build a sweet, savory base for the soup.
Bones from head and heel
Stewing releases gelatin and flavor, giving the broth body and richness.
Curry powder
Blooms in hot butter to deliver the dish's main spiced aroma.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that sharpens the curry flavor.
Harvey's sauce
Adds a tangy, savory note stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Flour coats the onions and they must brown in butter to develop deep, sweet flavor. Pale onions leave the soup flat, while over-browned ones turn bitter.

Swap the turmeric

The recipe marks turmeric as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, onion, pepper, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, onion, pepper, sauce. 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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