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Olla Podrida, or Spanish National Soup

A Spanish stew of beef, ham, poultry, sausages, vegetables, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Olla Podrida, or Spanish National Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Build the base

  1. Place slices of raw ham at the bottom of a stockpot.

  2. Add sliced gravy beef and the roasted old hen.

  3. Garnish with cloves and mace.

Make the broth and cook the meats

  1. Moisten with 1 quart of water, set on fire, and reduce the broth to a glaze.

  2. Fill up with water as soon as it boils and skim the surface.

  3. Let the stock boil gently for 2 hours.

  4. Add the large fowl, partridges, pork sausages, and Spanish savaloys.

  5. Monitor cooking to prevent overcooking, then remove when done.

Cut and combine

  1. Cool the meat, then cut the fowl and partridges into small pieces, and the sausages and savaloys into small balls.

  2. In a soup pot, combine all meats with carrots, turnips, celery, and leeks boiled in consomme with a small lump of sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + turniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Long gentle simmering breaks down its connective tissue, making the meat tender and enriching the broth.
Roasted old hen
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the stock, giving it body and depth.
Raw ham
Lays a salty, savoury base that seasons the broth as it cooks.
Pork sausages
Renders fat and seasoning into the broth while firming as they cook.

The step that matters

Let the stock boil gently for 2 hours. A rolling boil toughens meat and clouds the broth, while a gentle simmer lets collagen soften slowly and keeps the stock clear and tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, clove, pork, carrot, olive, turnip):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, clove, pork, carrot, olive, turnip. 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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