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Cream of Peanut Soup

A creamy soup made with stock, peanut butter, and cream, served with toasted bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Peanut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Prepare 2 quarts of rich soup stock flavored with bay leaf, onion, and celery.

  2. Strain the stock.

Make the soup

  1. In a bowl, moisten ½ cup of peanut butter with a little of the stock and rub it smooth.

  2. Cook the peanut butter mixture in the stock for about 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  4. Just before serving, stir in ½ cup of cream.

Serve

  1. Serve with cubes of toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Onion + peanuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,043 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Peanut + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Peanut butter
Thickens the stock and gives the soup its body and nutty flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the finished soup.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavors.

The step that matters

Smoothing the peanut butter into the stock. Peanut butter left in lumps will not dissolve evenly when cooked, so moistening it with a little stock first and rubbing it smooth helps it blend into the liquid without clumping. Straining afterward removes any remaining bits.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, peanut, butter, cream, bread):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, peanut, butter, cream, bread. 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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