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Soup

Clear Brown Soup

A clear soup made from stock, egg white, and tapioca or pasta, colored brown with caramel or kitchen bouquet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and pasta work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 601 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Clear Brown Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the stock

  1. Measure out 1 quart of stock and heat it until lukewarm.

  2. Stir in the egg white and bring to a boil while stirring continuously.

  3. Once it bubbles, remove from heat and add a little cold water.

  4. Let it stand for three minutes, then pour off the dregs through a flannel bag or double cloth.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the clear soup to the fire and add soaked tapioca or pasta shapes.

  2. Simmer for five minutes, then color with kitchen bouquet or caramel 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.

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. Egg + pastatop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 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

Stock
Forms the body and flavor base of the soup.
Egg white
Coagulates as it heats, trapping cloudy particles so they can be strained out for a clear soup.
Tapioca or pasta shapes
Adds body and bulk to the clear soup as a starch-based garnish.
Kitchen bouquet or caramel
Adds a brown color to the soup without changing its clarity.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg white into the stock. Stirring keeps the egg white evenly dispersed so it can coagulate and collect impurities as the stock heats. If it clumps or the stock is not stirred, the clarifying raft forms unevenly and the soup stays cloudy.

“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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