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Soup

Meat and Kidney Soup

A soup made with mutton, rump steak, kidneys, carrots, onions, and rice, simmered in water and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Meat and Kidney Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton, steak, and kidneys into small pieces and place them in a pot with water.

  2. Skim the surface.

  3. Add the grated carrot and chopped onion.

Cook

  1. Boil for 2 hours.

  2. Add the rice and boil for an additional 20 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton neck
Gives the broth its rich, meaty flavour as it simmers for a long time.
Rump steak
Adds more beef flavour and body to the broth.
Mutton kidneys
Add a deeper, richer savoury flavour to the soup.
Rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during cooking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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