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Semolina Soup

Semolina soup made with bone stock, semolina, milk, optional vegetables, herbs, peppercorns, and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Semolina Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. If the stock is plain, boil the onion, carrot, herbs, and peppercorns in it for 30 minutes, then strain.

Make the soup

  1. Return the stock to the saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Sprinkle in the semolina while stirring until it boils.

  3. Simmer until the semolina thickens.

  4. Add the milk, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil again.

Serve

  1. Pour into a warm tureen and serve with fried 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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Semolina + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Semolina
Swells and thickens the stock as it cooks, giving the soup its body.
Bone stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Milk
Adds richness and softens the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Sprinkling in the semolina. Semolina clumps quickly if dropped into liquid all at once. Sprinkling it in slowly while stirring disperses the grains so they hydrate evenly and the soup thickens smoothly rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (semolina, milk, pepper, carrot, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against semolina, milk, pepper, carrot, 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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