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Tapioca Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with tapioca, white stock, celery, onion, milk, mace, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tapioca and soak it overnight in water.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the soaked tapioca gently in the white stock for one hour, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

  2. In a separate pot, boil the chopped celery and finely sliced onion in the milk with a pinch of mace for twenty minutes.

  3. Strain the milk and add it to the tapioca mixture.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  5. Stir in the butter until melted and serve very hot.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the stock as its starch gelatinises during long gentle simmering, giving body to the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base in which the tapioca swells and cooks.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, and carries the flavour of the celery, onion and mace.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Boil the soaked tapioca gently in the stock. Tapioca thickens only as its starch swells and cooks through, so it needs a full hour at a gentle simmer. Stirring prevents the starch from sticking and scorching on the base of the pot.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, onion, milk, pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, onion, milk, pepper, egg, butter. 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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