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Soup

Cheese Soup, Without Meat

A layered cheese soup made with Gruyère, bread crumbs, butter, flour, onions, water, pepper, salt, and burnt sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Soup, Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tureen

  1. Layer half of the grated cheese at the bottom of a soup tureen.

  2. Add a layer of stale bread crumbs on top of the cheese.

  3. Repeat the layers until all cheese is used, filling the tureen to one-fourth full.

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Cook the flour mixture until it browns.

  4. Add the minced onions.

  5. Cook the onions until browned.

  6. Gradually stir in the water.

  7. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  8. Season with pepper and salt.

  9. Add a little burnt sugar for color.

Assemble and serve

  1. Let the soup sit for a couple of minutes to soak the bread and cheese.

  2. Serve immediately without disturbing the layers.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Gruyere cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Gruyere cheese
Melts into the broth to give the soup its rich, savoury flavour and body.
Stale bread
Soaks up the hot liquid and cheese, giving the soup a thick, soft texture.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness when it cooks with the flour.
Flour
Browns with the butter and thickens the soup as the water is added.
Onions
Adds savoury depth and aroma as they brown in the butter.

The step that matters

Cook the flour mixture until it browns. Cooking the butter and flour together until nutty and golden removes the raw starch taste and builds colour and flavour. Stopping too early leaves a pasty taste, while going too far scorches the roux and makes it bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gruyere cheese, bread, egg, butter, flour, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gruyere cheese, bread, egg, butter, flour, pepper, 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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