Skip to main content
Main

Soup Powder

A powdered blend of dried lemon peel, thyme, sweet marjoram, parsley, and celery seed for soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Soup Powder

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the powder

  1. Dry the lemon peel, thyme, sweet marjoram, and parsley in a warm oven.

  2. Pound and sift the dried herbs.

  3. Add the powdered celery seed and mix well.

  4. Bottle and cork the mixture.

Use

  1. Add 1 teaspoon of the soup powder to 1 quart of almost any soup.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma that lifts the flavour of soups.
Dried thyme
Contributes earthy, savoury aroma that carries well through cooking.
Dried sweet marjoram
Adds a mild, sweet herbal aroma to the blend.
Dried parsley
Provides a fresh, grassy note once the herbs are dried and powdered.
Powdered celery seed
Adds a concentrated celery flavour that deepens savoury soups.

The step that matters

Drying the herbs in a warm oven. Heat that is too high can scorch or darken the delicate herbs and peel, giving a bitter taste. Gentle, even warmth dries them evenly so they powder cleanly and keep their aroma.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, thyme, marjoram, parsley):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, thyme, marjoram, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes