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Sweet-bread Soup, German Fashion

A clear soup of yellow stock with ham, leek, celery, parsley, sweetbreads, noodles, egg yolks, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweet-bread Soup, German Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Prepare 2-3 quarts of good yellow stock and bring it to a boil.

  2. Add the slice of raw ham, leek, celery, root parsley, and bunch of parsley.

  3. Remove from heat and let it clarify for 25 minutes.

  4. Skim off the fat and strain the stock into another pot, keeping it warm.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads, trim them, and cut them in half.

  2. Sauté the sweetbreads in hot butter, then cut them into large dice and add to the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. After 15 minutes, add the minced noodles.

  2. Thicken the soup with the egg yolks diluted with a little cream.

  3. Finish with a piece of fine butter and serve in a soup tureen.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, rich meat that makes the soup substantial.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup into a smooth, velvety body when gently heated.
Yellow stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavour of the soup.
Minced noodles
Add body and a soft, starchy texture to the broth.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so if the soup boils after they are added it can curdle and turn grainy. Keep it hot but below a simmer and stir constantly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, leek, parsley, butter, egg, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, leek, parsley, butter, egg, cream. 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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