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Soup

Round the Table

A vegetable soup of Jerusalem artichokes, one of several old soup formulas in this record, made au maigre or au gras.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Chevalley de Rivaz, Victor · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 784 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Round the Table

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Put an ounce of butter into a saucepan with three large onions, shred fine, and fry them a pale brown colour.

  2. Add half a tablespoonful of flour and stir for a few minutes without letting the mixture darken.

  3. Add one quart of stock and stir until the soup boils.

  4. Season to taste with powdered pepper and salt.

Add the vegetables and finish

  1. Peel one or two potatoes, cut them into small dice, and boil them with the soup.

  2. Cut crust of stale bread into long pieces, dry them in the oven, and throw them into the soup at serving.

  3. Stir the soup off the fire with the yolks of two eggs beaten up with a little milk and strained.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

726Calories
18 gProtein
24 gFat
116 gCarbs

Counts 14 of 17 ingredients. The other 3 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 14 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Barley1 cup cooked (157g)193
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Carrot1 medium (61g)25
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Lettuce1 cup shredded (36g)5
Thyme1 tsp dried (1.4g)4
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Meatnot in our table0
Waternot in our table0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Chevalley de Rivaz, Victor. 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. See the original page.

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. Barley + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together784 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Lettuce + barleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Frying them to a pale brown builds the sweet, savoury base of the soup.
Flour (in the method)
Stirred into the fried onions, it thickens the soup slightly.
Potatoes
Boiled in the soup until tender, they break down and add body.
Eggs
Egg yolks stirred in off the heat enrich the soup and thicken it smoothly.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the fire. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the soup is kept boiling when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so the soup should be off the heat when they are stirred in.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, cream, sugar, butter, barley, meat, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cream, sugar, butter, barley, meat, egg. 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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