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Soup

German Soup

A German soup made with cumin seeds, butter, chicken broth, pepper, sea salt, and toasted bread sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

German Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Fry cumin seeds in butter over medium heat for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Pour chicken broth over the fried seeds and simmer gently for nearly an hour.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Place toasted bread in a tureen and strain the soup over the sippets.

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

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

  2. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  3. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Cumin seed
Provides the main aroma and flavour, released by frying in butter.
Butter
Carries the cumin flavour and adds richness when the seeds are fried.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavour during simmering.

The step that matters

Frying the cumin seeds. Frying over medium heat for a few minutes releases the fat-soluble aromatic oils in the seeds. Stirring constantly prevents the seeds from scorching, which would make the soup taste bitter.

“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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