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Jenny Lind Soup

A light soup made with sago, water, bouillon, spices, parsley, egg yolks, and hot cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Jenny Lind Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sago

  1. Soak the sago in cold water for several hours.

  2. Boil the soaked sago in fresh water until it reaches boiling point.

  3. Pour cold water over the sago in a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Cook the sago for 20 minutes with bouillon, skimming carefully.

  2. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, and parsley.

  3. Mix in the egg yolks and hot cream through a sieve.

  4. Stir thoroughly with a large spoon 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.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Sago
Swells into soft, translucent grains that give the soup its body and chewy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup as they set gently with heat, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Hot cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the flavour and making the soup silkier.
Bouillon
Provides the savoury base flavour that the soup is built on.

The step that matters

Mix in the egg yolks and hot cream. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Adding the hot cream gradually and straining through a sieve keeps the soup smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, sugar, egg, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, sugar, egg, cream. 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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