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White Soup

A light soup made with tapioca, cream, onion, and mace, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca overnight.

Make the soup

  1. Add the soaked tapioca to the stock and boil for one hour.

  2. In another pot, combine the cream, cold water, onion, mace, salt, and pepper.

  3. Simmer for twenty minutes, then strain into the stock.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately; do not leave on the stove.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Cream + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Tapioca
Thickens the soup as its starch swells and gelatinizes during boiling, giving body and a clear sheen.
Soup stock
Forms the main liquid and carries the flavor of the whole soup.
Cream
Adds richness, fat, and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Onion
Contributes savory aromatic flavor as it simmers in the cream mixture.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the cream.

The step that matters

Serve immediately; do not leave on the stove. Tapioca keeps thickening as it sits, so the soup can become gluey, and prolonged heat can make cream separate or turn grainy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, onion, 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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