Skip to main content
Main

Portable Soup

A dried soup square made from boiled beef or veal liquor, seasoned, and rehydrated with water and optional vegetables.

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

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Portable Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Skim the fat from the liquor in which beef or veal has been boiled.

  2. Boil the liquor down to a thick consistency.

  3. Season the liquor with pepper, coarse sea salt, cloves, and allspice.

  4. Add wine or brandy to the liquor.

Dry and store

  1. Pour the seasoned liquor onto platters, no more than ¾ inch thick.

  2. Once the liquid has cooled, cut it into squares.

  3. Set the squares in the sun to dry, turning them often.

  4. When completely dry, store the squares in an earthen vessel with white paper between each layer.

Make the soup

  1. To make soup, take one square and add it to 1 quart of scalding hot water; add vegetables if desired.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Clove + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Liquor from boiled beef or veal
Provides the concentrated meaty base that sets into a firm, flavourful square.
Wine or brandy
Adds a sharp, aromatic note that rounds out the richness of the reduced stock.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the reduced stock and helps preserve the dried squares.

The step that matters

Boil the liquor down to a thick consistency. The stock must be reduced enough that it sets firm and dries without spoiling. Too thin a reduction stays moist and can turn mouldy before it dries fully.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, clove, wine):

  1. Rosemaryfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, clove, wine. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes