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Spring Soup

A simple onion soup thickened with flour and butter, seasoned with salt and paprika, served hot with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Spring Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the small onions.

  2. Simmer the onions in 1 quart of water until very tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Season with coarse sea salt and paprika.

  2. Thicken the soup with 3 tablespoons of flour and 3 tablespoons of butter, rubbed together.

  3. Stir in 1 pint of hot milk.

  4. Serve immediately with 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Onions
Provide the main body and sweet, savoury flavour of the soup as they soften.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it body when cooked with the butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with the flour and butter. Rubbing flour and butter together before adding them keeps the flour from clumping. Adding it to hot liquid and stirring lets the starch swell evenly, giving a smooth, lightly thickened soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, 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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