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Soup

Red Currant Soup

A soup made from ripe red currants simmered with water, then strained and seasoned with lemon and honey, thickened with oatmeal flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Red Currant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Simmer the currants and water until soft.

  2. Sieve the mixture to remove solids.

Season and thicken

  1. Season with lemon and honey.

  2. Add a little oatmeal flour to thicken.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Lemon + honeytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Red currant + honeytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Red currant + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Red currants
Provide the tart flavour and bright colour that define the soup.
Oatmeal flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Honey
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the currants.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fruit.

The step that matters

Add the oatmeal flour gradually. Flour starch swells on contact with hot liquid and forms lumps if added in one go. Sprinkling in a little at a time and whisking it through keeps the soup smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, honey, flour. 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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