Name: Pork Soup with Vegetables
Ingredients: 4 pounds clear pork, without rind or bone; Fat for frying; 3 handfuls coarse sea salt; Desiccated vegetables (soaked); Pepper to taste; Vinegar to taste; 3-4 loaves stale bread, cut into 2-inch pieces

Why it works: Pork and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,371 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Pork Soup with Vegetables

Ingredients

4 pounds clear pork, without rind or bone
Fat for frying
3 handfuls coarse sea salt
Desiccated vegetables (soaked)
Pepper to taste
Vinegar to taste
3-4 loaves stale bread, cut into 2-inch pieces

Directions

Prepare the pork

Cut the pork into one-inch square pieces.
Heat fat in a pan until very hot, then fry enough pork to cover the bottom until browned.
Transfer the fried pork to another pan and repeat with the remaining pork.

Make the soup

Boil 3 kettles of clean water, adding one-third of the fried pork and a handful of salt to each kettle.
After 15 minutes, add one-third of the soaked desiccated vegetables to each kettle and continue boiling gently for 1.5 hours.
If using stale bread, divide the pieces equally among the kettles after 15 minutes of slow boiling.
Season with pepper, salt, and a little vinegar.
Remove any fat that floats on top before serving.

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.

Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,371 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pork + vinegartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,563 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork: Browning the cubes in hot fat adds flavour, and long gentle simmering makes the meat tender and savoury.
Desiccated vegetables: Rehydrated in the broth, they add body, flavour and vegetable substance to the soup.
Stale bread: Its dry crumb soaks up broth and thickens the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Frying the pork until browned. The pan must be very hot and filled only enough to cover the bottom, so the pork browns rather than steams. Browning builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, which is lost if the pieces crowd together.

“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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

Pork Cake107 recipes

Roast Pork82 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

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Pork Soup with Vegetables