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Soup

Hasty Soup

A soup made from vegetable marrow, butter, milk, water, and seasonings, finished with optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Hasty Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut up the vegetable marrow, leaving the seeds intact.

Cook

  1. In a pan, combine the marrow, butter, water, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cover the pan and simmer for about 1 hour.

  3. Rub the cooked marrow through a sieve.

Finish

  1. Mix the milk and flour until smooth, then add to the pan and bring to a boil.

  2. Add a little cream for extra richness, if desired.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Vegetable marrow
Forms the body of the soup and, once sieved, gives it a smooth, thick texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich.

The step that matters

Mix the milk and flour until smooth. Flour clumps if added dry or unmixed, and lumps won't disperse easily once heated. Mixing it smooth with the milk first lets the starch disperse evenly so it thickens the soup without graininess.

“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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