Skip to main content
Main

Prussian Soup

A hearty soup made with celery, carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, mutton, and water.

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

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Prussian Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a large saucepan, heat the ghee or dripping over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped celery, carrots, turnips, onions, and lettuce and fry until softened.

  3. Add the sliced mutton and cook for 1 hour without adding water.

  4. Pour in the water and cover the saucepan.

  5. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat flavour and richness as its fat and juices render into the broth.
Celery
Builds the aromatic base of the soup, releasing savoury flavour as it softens in fat.
Onions
Softened in fat, they add sweetness and depth to the broth's savoury base.
Carrots
Soften during frying and simmering, adding gentle sweetness and body to the soup.
Turnips
Soften during simmering, adding mild sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Cook the mutton for 1 hour without adding water. Frying the mutton in the vegetables' fat without liquid lets its surface brown and develop savoury flavour through browning. Adding water too early would steam the meat and dilute that flavour.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, onion, ghee, mutton):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, onion, ghee, mutton. 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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipes