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Family Soup

A broth of meat or poultry liquor thickened with tapioca or flour, mixed with vegetables and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Family Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock base

  1. Boil the liquor from meat or poultry until reduced by half.

  2. Add a good teacupful of mixed vegetables, chopped parsley, and herbs tied in muslin.

  3. Boil until the mixture can be sieved or passed through a colander.

Thicken and finish

  1. Return the liquid to the pan and thicken with tapioca, rice flour, corn flour, or cooked grain.

  2. Cook until thickened, about 5 to 15 minutes depending on the thickening agent used.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 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

Liquor from meat or poultry
Provides the main savoury body and flavour of the soup.
Mixed vegetables
Add sweetness, aroma and body as they break down during boiling and sieving.
Tapioca or sago
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving a smooth texture.
Ground rice or rice flour
Adds starch that thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, light body.
Corn flour or potato flour
Thickens the soup through starch gelatinising when heated in the liquid.
Cooked grain or cold macaroni
Adds body and substance, with its own starch helping the soup thicken.

The step that matters

Thickening the soup. Starches such as flour, tapioca or rice only thicken fully when the liquid is hot enough for the granules to swell and gelatinise. Stir while adding them to prevent lumps, then cook long enough so the raw starch taste disappears and the texture stops being thin or grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, celery, leek, turnip, carrot, parsnip, parsley):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, celery, leek, turnip, carrot, parsnip, parsley. 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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