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Pumpkin Soup

A soup made from pumpkin, butter, stock, milk, bread crumbs, onion, eggs, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Pumpkin Soup

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 ↓

Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Peel and cut the pumpkin into thick slices, removing the seeds.

  2. Place the pumpkin in a pot and cover with water.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and boil gently for 5 minutes.

  4. Drain the water and pass the pumpkin through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the pumpkin pulp for a few minutes.

  2. Add the hot stock to the pumpkin mixture.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in milk.

  4. Add the sliced onion and water, bring to a boil and add to the soup.

  5. Simmer the soup gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally and removing any scum.

  6. Add bay leaves for flavor.

  7. Strain the soup through a colander.

  8. Stir in a pinch of sugar, salt, and pepper.

  9. Boil gently for a few more minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. In a soup tureen, beat the egg yolks with a little milk.

  2. Pour the soup into the tureen while stirring briskly.

  3. Serve with sippets of fried bread.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Pumpkin + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Forms the body and thick texture of the soup as it is pureed.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when the pumpkin is first stirred in.
Stale bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they thicken the soup and give it a smooth body.
Egg yolks
Beaten in at the end, they enrich the soup and add body and smoothness.
Stock
Provides the savory liquid base that the pumpkin is blended into.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds creaminess to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Pouring the soup into the tureen while stirring briskly. Egg yolks scramble if they meet hot liquid without being mixed in quickly. Constant stirring disperses the yolks evenly so the soup thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, butter, bread, milk, sugar, pepper, egg. 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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