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Amber Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken, pork, veal or beef, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, cloves, peppercorns, salt, cayenne pepper, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Amber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Fry the chicken, pork, and onion in a pot.

  2. Add the veal or beef and cold water to the pot.

  3. Simmer slowly for 4 hours, skimming often.

  4. Add the carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, cloves, peppercorns, and salt.

  5. Simmer for another hour, then strain and return to the pot.

Clarify and serve

  1. Season with cayenne pepper and salt to taste.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs thoroughly.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let it simmer until still.

  4. Skim well and serve.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
The whites coagulate and collect impurities, clarifying the soup into a clear amber broth.
Veal or beef
Long simmering draws gelatin and meaty flavor into the water, giving the broth body and depth.
Chicken
Frying and simmering release savory flavor and gelatin, adding richness to the broth.
Onion
Frying browns its sugars, adding sweetness and color that deepens the broth's amber tone.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let it simmer until still. Boiling vigorously breaks up the egg raft and cloudies the broth. Gentle simmering lets the egg whites coagulate and trap particles so the soup clears.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, veal, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, veal, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley. 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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