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Clear Soup

A light broth made with stock, egg, beef, vegetables, herbs, and seasonings, strained for clarity.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Clear Soup

Why it works: Turnip and leek 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 ↓

Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove fat from the hot stock using paper or a spoon, ensuring no specks remain.

Make the soup

  1. Pour stock into a clean pan and add the egg, scraped beef, diced vegetables, herbs, and seasonings.

  2. Whisk the mixture over medium heat until it boils, then reduce heat and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a clean cloth without squeezing to keep it clear.

  2. Optionally, add wine for flavor 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Bind to the scraped beef and collect particles, clarifying the broth as they coagulate.
Scraped beef
Adds meaty flavor and traps fine particles that would otherwise cloud the soup.
Stock
Forms the base liquid that carries all the flavor of the soup.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Strain without squeezing. Pressing the cloth pushes fine particles and cloudy material through, undoing the clarification that the egg and beef have achieved and leaving the soup murky.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, beef, carrot, turnip, leek, thyme, 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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