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Spring Fruit Soup

A savory soup of rhubarb, ham, onions, carrot, consommé, and bread crumbs, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spring Fruit Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Peel and wash the rhubarb, then blanch it in water for 3-4 minutes.

  2. Drain the rhubarb on a sieve and place it in a stewpan with sliced onions, carrot, and ham.

Make the soup

  1. Add butter and stew gently over low heat until tender.

  2. Pour in the consommé and add bread crumbs; boil for about 15 minutes.

  3. Skim off the fat, season with salt and Cayenne pepper, and pass through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  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

Rhubarb sticks
Provides the tart, fibrous body that the soup is built around.
Onions
Softened in butter to add sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Butter
Adds fat for gentle stewing and a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Consommé
Supplies the main liquid and savoury flavour of the soup.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the soup as they soak up liquid and break down during boiling.

The step that matters

Stew gently over low heat until tender. Rhubarb and onions scorch easily over high heat, which gives a bitter, burnt taste. Gentle heat softens them evenly so the soup stays smooth and mild when sieved.

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, ham, butter, bread, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, ham, butter, bread, pepper. 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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