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Baking

Baked Soup

A hearty soup made by baking meat, vegetables, rice, split peas, and seasonings in a stone jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley 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 ↓

Baked Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat and vegetables into slices.

  2. Add the rice, split peas, salt, pepper, parsley, and celery to a stone jar.

  3. Pour in the cold water and cover the jar tightly.

Bake

  1. Bake in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for several hours.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Gives savory flavor and richness as its juices and collagen dissolve into the broth.
Split peas
Break down during long cooking, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Rice
Softens and absorbs liquid, adding thickness to the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the broth.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Cover the jar tightly. A tight cover keeps steam from escaping during the long, low-temperature bake, so the liquid stays in the jar and the flavors concentrate rather than evaporating away.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, carrot, rice, peas, pepper, celery):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Cuminfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, carrot, rice, peas, pepper, celery. 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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