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Almond Soup

A creamy soup made with white stock, cream, flour, butter, salt, pepper, and blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Almond Soup

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the hot cream and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the hot stock and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Finally, add the chopped almonds and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Flour and butter 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

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the base fat of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquids into a smooth, body-rich soup.
Cream
Adds fat and silky texture, giving the soup a richer mouthfeel.
White stock
Forms the main liquid, providing savory depth and the soup's volume.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavor and a fine, slightly grainy body to the soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until smooth. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the melted butter before liquid is added; if lumps form or the roux is not stirred evenly, the soup will have a pasty, uneven texture when thickened.

“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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