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Austrian Bread Soup

A hearty soup made with bacon, stale bread, carrots, beets, onions, turnips, cabbage, bay leaf, cloves, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Austrian Bread Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the bacon fat in a pot.

  2. Cut the carrots, beets, onions, turnips, and cabbage into small pieces and add them to the bacon fat.

  3. Add the cloves, bay leaf, salt, and whole black pepper.

Make the soup

  1. Soak the stale bread in water, then add the soaking water to the vegetables.

  2. Break the bread into small bits and add it to the pot.

  3. Pour in about 8 cups of water and cook very slowly for 3 to 4 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Stale bread
Thickens the broth and gives the soup its body as it softens.
Onions
Build sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the fat.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the vegetable base.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a mild sweetness as it cooks down slowly.
Bacon fat
Carries flavour from the start and adds richness to the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking very slowly for 3 to 4 hours. A gentle, long simmer lets the vegetables and bread break down fully and blend into a smooth, well-flavoured broth. Boiling hard can make the bread gummy and scorch the bottom of the pot.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, carrot, onion, turnip, cabbage, pepper):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, carrot, onion, turnip, cabbage, pepper. 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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