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Soup

Velvet Soup

A soup made from tapioca, stock, egg yolks, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Velvet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the tapioca in the stock or bouillon until tender, ensuring the liquid does not become too thick.

  2. In a soup tureen, place the egg yolks.

  3. Pour the cooked tapioca over the yolks, stirring to mix until creamy.

  4. Add a grain of nutmeg for flavor, if desired.

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. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Swells in the hot stock and thickens the soup into a smooth body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and add richness and a creamy texture when stirred in.

The step that matters

Pouring the tapioca over the yolks while stirring. Hot tapioca added to raw yolks can scramble them if poured in too fast or unstirred. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the yolks thicken smoothly into a creamy soup rather than forming lumps.

“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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