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Egg Soup

A clear soup made with white stock, milk, egg yolks, sago, onion, seasoned with salt and pepper, garnished with parsley and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the sago, stock, and onion together until the sago is clear.

  2. Remove the onion.

  3. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

Add the egg and milk

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the beaten yolks.

  3. Strain the mixture into the stock.

  4. Return the stock to the heat.

  5. Whisk until it reaches boiling point, but do not let it boil to avoid curdling.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a tureen.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  3. 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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the soup into a smooth, lightly set body as they heat.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the flavour of the stock.
Sago
Swells as it cooks, giving the soup body and a slightly thick texture.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the whole soup.

The step that matters

Heating the egg and milk mixture. Egg yolks set when heated, so if the soup boils after the yolks go in, they can curdle and turn grainy. Heat gently and stop at boiling point.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, pepper, parsley, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, pepper, parsley, 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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