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Amber Soup

A clear soup made with ham or bacon, egg whites, celery seed, lemon rind and juice, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Amber Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make stock as directed in previous instructions, adding the ham or bacon.

Clarify and serve

  1. Once cold, mix in the egg whites, shells, celery seed, lemon rind, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

  2. Reheat the mixture and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain through a fine strainer or flannel bag until clear.

  4. Serve hot, with or without lemon.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites and shells
Coagulate as they heat, trapping particles so the soup strains clear.
Lean ham or bacon
Adds savory, meaty flavor to the stock.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that lift the savory stock.

The step that matters

Reheat and boil the egg white mixture. The egg whites must be heated gradually and then boiled so they coagulate and form a raft that traps impurities. Stirring or disturbing the mixture too early can break the raft and leave the soup cloudy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, egg, lemon, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, lemon, 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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