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Soup

Potage Allemand Au Cumin

A simple soup made by sautéing cumin in butter, simmering with chicken stock, and serving with rye bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cumin and rye share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potage Allemand Au Cumin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the soup

  1. Sauté the cumin in butter until fragrant.

  2. Add the chicken stock and simmer for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour into a soup tureen and serve with rye bread on the side.

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. Cumin + ryetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rye + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  4. Cumin + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,937 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + ryetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cumin
Blooming in butter releases its aroma, which flavours the whole soup.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the cumin flavour.

Swap the cumin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rye, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Cuminthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rye, bread. 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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