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Clear Soup

A clear broth made from soup meat or bone, water, salt, pepper, carrot, turnip, onion, and a clove.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Clear Soup

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 ↓

Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gash the meat well.

  2. Place the meat in a pot with 3 quarts of cold water.

  3. Add 3 teaspoons of salt and ½ teaspoon of pepper.

  4. Peel and cut the carrot, turnip, and onion (each should weigh 3 oz. after peeling).

  5. Stick 1 clove into the onion and add all vegetables to the pot.

Cook

  1. Cook until the meat is tender.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soup meat or soup bone
Releases flavor and gelatin into the water, giving the broth body as it simmers.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the broth as it cooks.
Carrot
Contributes mild sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Turnip
Adds subtle earthy flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Gash the meat well. Cutting into the meat exposes more surface and connective tissue so flavor and gelatin leach into the water during the long simmer. Shallow cuts release less, leaving the broth thinner.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, carrot, turnip, clove. 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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