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Peanut Soup

A soup made with peanuts, flour, oysters, hot water, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,427 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Peanut Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the peanuts until fine.

  2. Mix in the flour.

Make the soup

  1. Add the oysters and hot water.

  2. Cut the red pepper in half and add it to the mixture.

  3. Boil and serve.

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. Peanut + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Peanut + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

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

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Peanut + oystertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Peanuts
Pounded into fine particles, they thicken the soup and give it a rich, nutty body.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid and helps the peanut mixture hold together as a smooth soup.
Oysters
Main protein that adds savory, briny flavor to the broth.
Red pepper
Adds sweetness, mild heat, and aroma that brightens the soup.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the peanuts. Stirring the flour in before the liquid is added helps it disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, oyster, pepper):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, oyster, 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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