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Tapioca Cream Soup

A soup made with tapioca, white stock, cream, onion, celery, butter, mace, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Wash the tapioca and soak it overnight in cold water.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, cook the tapioca and white stock together very gently for one hour.

  2. In another pot, cook the chopped onion and celery with the cream and mace for twenty minutes.

  3. Strain the onion and celery mixture into the tapioca and stock.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, add the butter, and serve.

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

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Swells during slow cooking to thicken the soup into a creamy body.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
White stock
Provides the main liquid and savory base for the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounded flavor and silky mouthfeel.
Onion
Contributes savory sweetness and aroma to the flavor base.

The step that matters

Cooking the tapioca gently for a full hour. Tapioca starch must be heated long enough to fully swell and soften. Cooking too hot can scorch the base or leave the starch grainy, and rushing it leaves the soup thin and unset.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, onion, celery, butter, 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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