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Tapioca Cream Soup

A soup made with celery, onion, carrot, coconut, herbs, stock, tapioca, eggs, milk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Put celery, onion, carrot, coconut, mignonette pepper, and herbs into a muslin bag and tie it up.

  2. Place the bag in a pot with 1 pint of stock, bring to a boil, and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the bag and squeeze out the liquid.

Thicken the soup

  1. Stir in 3 ounces of crushed tapioca and boil for 20 minutes.

Enrich and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 3 eggs.

  2. Gently heat 1 quart of milk and ½ cup of cream until warm.

  3. Mix the warm milk and cream with the beaten eggs gradually.

  4. Return the mixture to the pan with the stock, stirring until just before boiling.

  5. Serve 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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Crushed tapioca
Swells as it cooks, thickening the stock into a creamy body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the enriched soup and add richness when stirred in gently.
Milk
Adds creaminess and soft body to the soup base.
Cream
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca thickens.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot too fast. Adding the warm milk and cream gradually, while stirring, tempers the eggs, and heating only until just before boiling keeps the custard-like texture smooth.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, onion, carrot, pepper, egg, milk, cream):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, onion, carrot, pepper, egg, milk, cream. 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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