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Soup

Palestine Soup

A creamy soup made from Jerusalem artichokes, milk, spices, and fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Palestine Soup

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Palestine Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

  1. Boil the Jerusalem artichokes in salted water until tender.

  2. Pass the cooked artichokes through a fine sieve.

Flavor the milk

  1. In a pot, boil the milk with whole pepper, mace, cloves, and onions until flavored.

  2. Strain the flavored milk.

Make and serve the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour, then gradually add the flavored milk and artichoke pulp.

  2. Bring to a boil, mix well, and stir in the cream.

  3. Serve with small cubes of bread fried in butter.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Jerusalem artichoke + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Jerusalem artichoke + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Jerusalem artichokes
Provide the main body and starchy flavor that thickens the soup when passed through a sieve.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, carrying the flavor of the spices and onions.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base for the flour roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup by binding with the butter and milk as it heats.
Cream
Adds smoothness, richness and body to the finished soup.
Onions or shallots
Add savory aromatic flavor to the milk as it is infused.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the butter and milk. Flour must be cooked in melted butter before liquid is added gradually, or it forms lumps. Bringing the mixture to a boil then cooks out the raw flour taste and fully thickens the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (jerusalem artichoke, milk, pepper, clove, onion, egg, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against jerusalem artichoke, milk, pepper, clove, onion, egg, butter. 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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