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Soup

A beef soup served with a crusted French roll, garnished with parsley, and a sauce of gravy, capers, carrots, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Remove all fat from the soup.

  2. Cut and dry the crust of a French roll and place it in a stewpan with a little soup.

  3. Stew over low heat.

  4. Place the roll in the soup tureen with a slice to prevent breaking.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Prepare a sauce with good gravy, capers, and finely chopped carrots, thickened with the egg yolk.

  2. Serve the beef untied, garnished with chopped parsley.

  3. Season the soup to taste 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beef + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,606 recipes

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

  5. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 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

French roll, crust dried
Soaks up soup and thickens the broth as it stews, giving body to the soup.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Beef
Provides the main meat and savoury flavour of the soup.
Good gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying its flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat; if the sauce gets too hot or boils, the yolk can curdle and turn grainy. Add it off the heat or over low heat while stirring constantly.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, carrot, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, carrot, egg. 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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