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Soup

Mock Bisque

A veal broth bisque enhanced with baked egg and flour rounds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the veal broth with salt and pepper to taste.

  2. In a bowl, mix the eggs with enough flour to form a stiff paste.

  3. Roll out the paste and cut it into small rounds using a cutter.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the rounds until lightly golden.

  2. Add the baked rounds to the soup and allow them to soften before serving.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the flour into a stiff paste that holds its shape when rolled and baked.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste so the rounds hold their shape while baking.
Veal broth
Forms the liquid base of the bisque and carries its flavour.

The step that matters

Bake the rounds until lightly golden. Baking sets the egg and flour paste into a firm, dry round. Under-baked rounds stay doughy and soggy, and over-baked rounds turn hard and brittle.

“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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