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Cream of Soy Bean Soup

A creamy soup made with butter, milk, onion, flour, soy beans, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Soy Bean Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the milk and onions, and bring to a boil.

Finish the soup

  1. Pass the cooked soy beans through a sieve.

  2. Add the sieved beans and salt to the milk mixture and reheat.

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

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

  2. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavor while the flour cooks.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy body as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the soup its creamy texture.
Soy beans
Provide the main body and flavor, and thicken the soup when sieved.
Onion
Adds aromatic savory flavor to the milk base.

The step that matters

Cook the flour thoroughly in the butter. Flour must cook in the melted fat before liquid is added; otherwise the starch does not gelatinize fully, leaving a raw floury taste and a weaker, lumpier thickening.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour, beans. 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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