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Pumpkin and Rice Soup

A soup made with pumpkin, rice, onions, cloves, celery, parsley, sugar, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pumpkin and Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice gently until almost soft.

  3. Drain the rice and set aside.

  4. Pare the pumpkin, remove the seeds, and slice the pumpkin.

Make the soup base

  1. Combine the pumpkin slices, onions, cloves, celery, parsley, sugar, salt, pepper, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently until the vegetables are soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a colander and discard the fibrous portion.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the puree and the liquid to the fire.

  2. Add the rice.

  3. Boil gently until the rice is tender.

  4. Serve very hot.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens the soup and adds body as its starch softens during boiling.
Pumpkin
Supplies the main flavour and, once puréed, the soup's smooth body and colour.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and depth as they soften in the simmering liquid.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic vegetable background flavour to the soup base.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a colander. Pressing the cooked vegetables through a colander separates the smooth purée from the fibrous strands. Skipping or rushing this leaves a stringy texture in the finished soup.

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, onion, clove, celery, parsley, sugar, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, onion, clove, celery, parsley, sugar, 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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