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Cheap Black Soup

A hearty soup made from turkey bones, pickled pork, vegetables, and spices, simmered for hours and thickened with flour.

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 ↓

Cheap Black Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crush the turkey bones.

  2. Slice and cut the carrot, onion, and turnip into four pieces each.

Make the soup

  1. Put the bones, carrot, onion, turnip, butter, and pickled pork into a soup pot.

  2. Fry until well browned.

  3. Pour in the water and add the parsley and summer savory.

  4. Boil slowly for four hours, skimming regularly.

  5. Strain the soup through a sieve and return it to the pot.

  6. Stir in the browned flour and boil for an additional 20 minutes.

  7. Add salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste.

  8. Heat the cooking wine and stir it into the soup.

Serve

  1. Crush the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs and place them in a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the egg yolks.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Summer savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Summer savory + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Turkey bones
Give the stock its deep, roasted meaty flavor as they simmer for hours.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty color and flavor.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savory depth to the broth as it cooks.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and body to the stock as it breaks down while simmering.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the base of the soup.
Cooking wine
Adds acidity and a rounded aroma to finish the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming during the long boil. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise to the surface, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting over the four-hour simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, pork, summer savory, butter, carrot, turnip, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, pork, summer savory, butter, carrot, turnip, 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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