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Pink Cream Soup

A creamy soup colored pink with boiled beets, served with marrow balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Pink Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and flour over heat until smooth.

  2. Gradually add milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Season with salt and nutmeg.

  4. Sieve in boiled beets to color the soup pink.

Make and cook the marrow balls

  1. In a bowl, mix marrow, bread crumbs, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add raw egg to form a smooth paste and shape into balls the size of a filbert.

  3. Drop balls into boiling water and cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Serve five marrow balls in each bowl of soup.

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

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the soup and adds richness and a rounded flavor to the base.
Flour
Melted with butter, it thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup, giving it creaminess when brought to a boil.
Raw egg
Binds the marrow, crumbs and parsley into a smooth paste that holds its shape.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk to the marrow mixture, helping the balls hold together and stay tender.
Boiled beets
Sieved into the soup to give it a pink color.

The step that matters

Shaping and cooking the marrow balls in boiling water. The paste must be smooth and firmly bound, or the balls can break apart in the pot. Keeping the water at a steady boil helps the egg set and the balls hold their shape while cooking.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, nutmeg, bread, egg, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, nutmeg, bread, egg, pepper. 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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