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Cold Bread Soup

A chilled soup made from bread crumbs, sweetened with sugar and cinnamon, flavored with currants, lemon juice, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Bread Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the crumbs of the white loaf into fine pieces.

  2. Mix the crumbs with sugar, cinnamon, currants, and lemon juice.

  3. Half fill an earthenware dish with the mixture.

Soak and chill

  1. Pour the port wine over the bread crumbs until completely covered.

  2. Cover the dish and refrigerate for a while 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.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Currant + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together356 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Bread + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together321 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

White bread
Forms the body of the soup and soaks up the port to become soft and spoonable.
Port wine
Soaks into the crumbs, adding moisture, depth and a sweet, rich flavour.
Currants
Add small pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the port and sugar.

The step that matters

Covering the bread completely with port. The crumbs must be fully submerged so they absorb the wine evenly. Any dry crumbs stay firm and chalky while the rest turns soft, giving an uneven texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, port wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, cinnamon, lemon, port wine. 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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