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Curry Soup

A spiced apple and onion soup thickened with flour and butter, flavored with curry powder and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Start the base

  1. Peel and slice the apples.

  2. Fry the apples in 2 ounces of butter or dripping.

  3. Add a thinly sliced onion, a squeeze of lemon, and 1 large teaspoon of curry powder.

  4. Cook gently for 20 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Add 1 quart of stock and simmer.

  2. Thicken with a little flour, rub through a sieve, and serve with rice.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Apples
Soften into pulp that gives the soup body and a mild, fruity sweetness.
Butter or dripping
Fat for frying the apples, carrying the curry flavour through the soup.
Onion
Softens as it cooks, adding savoury sweetness to the base.
Curry powder
Releases its aroma when warmed in fat, giving the soup its spiced flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavours and balances the sweetness of the apples.
Flour
Starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the soup to a smoother body.

The step that matters

Thicken with a little flour. Starch grains clump when dropped into hot liquid unevenly. Mixing the flour smoothly with a little cold liquid first, then simmering, lets it thicken evenly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, flour, butter, lemon. 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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