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Cream Soup

A creamy soup made from calf's head broth, onion, parsley, mace, milk, egg yolks, and thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cream Soup

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the calf's head until tender.

  2. Let the head cool.

  3. Skim the pot liquor.

  4. Add onion, parsley, and mace.

  5. Boil slowly for 2 hours.

  6. Strain the broth.

  7. Cool the broth.

  8. Skim off fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the soup.

  2. Thicken the soup with corn-starch mixed in cold water.

  3. Beat the yolks in a bowl.

  4. Add boiling milk to the yolks.

  5. Pour the mixture into a heated tureen and stir the soup.

  6. Serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + peppertop 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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Liquor from boiled calf's head
Forms the savoury body and base flavour of the soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently when heated.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the broth's richness.
Corn-starch
Thickens the soup as it swells in hot liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk to the yolks. Hot milk must be combined with the beaten yolks carefully, so the yolks warm gradually and thicken smoothly. Added too quickly or too hot, the egg proteins can scramble into lumps instead of enriching the soup.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

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