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Palestine Soup

A creamy soup of carrots, potatoes, ham, butter, parsley, and milk, thickened with flour and seasoned with salt and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Palestine Soup

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,053 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Palestine Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the carrot and potatoes.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the carrot, potatoes, butter, ham, and parsley.

  3. Cook over high heat for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the flour until well mixed.

Make the soup

  1. Add the stock and boiling milk, stirring until boiling.

  2. Season with salt and sugar.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve into another stewpan.

  4. Bring to a boil again, skim, and serve with croutons.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Break down when rubbed through the sieve, giving the soup body and a thick texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel in the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats with the stock and milk, giving it body.
Lean ham
Provides savory, salty meat flavor that carries through the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the savory stock flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until well mixed. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without being evenly mixed into the vegetables and fat first. Thorough mixing lets it dissolve and thicken the soup smoothly when the stock and milk are added.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, butter, ham, flour, milk, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Nutmegabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Celeryabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, butter, ham, flour, milk, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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