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Clear Soup

A clear beef soup made with butter, onion, beef, water, spices, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Clear Soup

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Clear Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Heat the butter in a covered saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced onion and stir until browned.

  3. Add the chopped beef and cold water, cover, and simmer for three hours.

  4. Strain the soup and return it to the kettle.

Clarify and serve

  1. Stir in the beaten egg white with a little cold water, salt, peppercorns, cloves, and mace.

  2. Boil for five minutes, then strain and serve hot.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean raw beef
Provides the main flavor and body of the broth as it simmers.
Egg white
Binds to fine particles as it cooks, so they rise and can be strained out, leaving the soup clear.
Onion
Browning builds a deeper, sweeter savory flavor in the broth.

The step that matters

Boil for five minutes after adding the egg white. The egg white must be stirred in before boiling. As it heats, it coagulates and traps cloudy particles, which rise to form a crust. Straining afterward removes them, so the soup stays clear. Boiling too hard or stirring too late can break up this raft and leave the broth cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, beef, egg, clove):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, beef, egg, 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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