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Soup

Tapioca Cream Soup

A cream soup thickened with tapioca and flavoured with milk, stock, celery, onion and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Hamilton, Margaret · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 26 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash half a cupful of tapioca and soak it all night in water.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the tapioca gently in 1 quart white stock for one hour, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

  2. Cut two stalks of celery into small pieces and slice one onion finely.

  3. Boil the celery and onion for twenty minutes in a pint of milk with a little mace for flavouring.

  4. Strain the milk and add it to the tapioca.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Stir in a piece of butter the size of an egg.

  7. Serve very hot.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

392Calories
15 gProtein
18 gFat
46 gCarbs

Counts 13 of 16 ingredients. The other 3 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 13 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Pea1/2 cup (72g)62
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Turnip1 medium (122g)34
Carrot1 medium (61g)25
Tomato1 medium (123g)22
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Celery1 stalk (40g)6
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Allspice1 tsp ground (1.9g)5
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0
Herringnot 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 Hamilton, Margaret. 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the stock as its starch swells and gelatinises during long gentle simmering.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks and thickens in.
Celery
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the milk used for the soup.
Onion
Adds savoury depth to the milk used for the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Boiling the tapioca gently with stirring. Tapioca starch settles to the bottom and scorches easily, so stirring and a gentle simmer prevent burning. The starch must also cook fully to swell and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, allspice, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, tomato):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, allspice, onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, tomato. 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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