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Soup

Restorative Soup

A soup made with celery, carrots, onions, cloves, peppercorns, water, Bovril, and brandy, boiled and strained.

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

Restorative Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the celery, carrots, onions, cloves, and peppercorns in the water for 1 hour. Strain the mixture.

  2. Dissolve the Bovril and brandy in the strained liquid.

Serve

  1. Serve in small quantities at frequent intervals to restore vitality.

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. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Simmered onions release sweetness and build a savory base for the broth.
Carrots
Carrots add gentle sweetness and body to the simmered liquid.
Celery
Celery contributes a savory, herbal aroma to the broth.
Cloves
Cloves add a warm, aromatic spice note during simmering.
Bovril
Bovril adds concentrated savory depth and salt to the liquid.
Brandy
Brandy adds aroma and carries flavor compounds into the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, clove, brandy):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, clove, brandy. 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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