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Simla Soup

A soup made with apples, onions, curry powder, stock, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Simla Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Heat the fat in a pot and fry the onions until brown.

  2. Add the curry powder and stir well over the heat.

  3. Add the chopped apples and stock, then simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve back into the saucepan.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice and sugar.

Serve

  1. Cook the rice separately as you would for curry.

  2. Serve the soup with the 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. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Onions
Browning in the fat builds a deep, savoury base flavour for the soup.
Apples
Break down during simmering to add body and natural sweetness to the soup.
Rice
Cooked separately, it gives a starchy side that absorbs the soup's richness.
Curry powder
Blooming in hot fat releases its aromatic spice compounds into the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the simmered apples and onions through a sieve breaks them into a smooth purée, giving the soup its body. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup lumpy and thin.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, rice, lemon, sugar. 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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