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Soup

Rice-flour Soup

A soup made by adding a rice flour batter to boiling broth, seasoned with mace, cayenne, curry powder, lemon juice, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Rice-flour Soup

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice-flour Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the rice flour with a little cold broth to form a smooth batter.

  2. Pour the batter into the boiling broth or gravy soup.

  3. Add mace, cayenne, and salt if needed.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

  5. For added flavor, stir in curry powder and lemon juice.

  6. To make a white soup, add thick cream if using real stock.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Rice flour
Thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Curry powder
Adds warm, spiced aroma and flavor to the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the soup.
Thick cream
Adds richness and fat, mellowing the soup and whitening its color.

The step that matters

Mix the rice flour into a smooth batter before adding it to the broth. Starch clumps when it hits hot liquid unless it is first dispersed in cold liquid. Mixing it smooth with cold broth lets the starch hydrate evenly, so it thickens the soup without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, pepper, lemon, cream):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, pepper, lemon, cream. 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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