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Pumpkin Soup

A soup made from pumpkin, stock, milk, bread crumbs, onion, and seasonings.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Peel and slice the pumpkin, removing seeds.

  2. Place the pumpkin in a pot and cover with water.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and boil gently for 5 minutes.

  4. Drain and pass the pumpkin through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the pumpkin pulp for a few minutes.

  3. Add the hot stock to the pumpkin mixture.

  4. Soak the bread crumbs in milk.

  5. Add the sliced onion and water to the mixture.

  6. Bring to a boil and add to the soup.

  7. Simmer the soup gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally and skimming off any scum.

  8. Add bay leaves for flavor.

  9. Strain the soup through a colander 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.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pumpkin + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pumpkin + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Forms the main body and bulk of the soup as a purée.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the soup.
Stale bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they thicken the soup and add body.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds creaminess to the soup.
Stock
Provides savory liquid that builds the soup's base flavor.

The step that matters

Skimming and simmering. Simmering gently for 20 minutes and skimming off scum keeps the soup clean-tasting and smooth. A hard boil can break the mixture and leave it cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pumpkin, butter, bread, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, butter, bread, milk. 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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