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Soup

Cream of Peanut Butter Soup

A creamy soup made with butter, peanut butter, flour, salt, milk, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Peanut Butter Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in the top pan of a double boiler over direct heat.

  2. Add the flour and salt, then set aside from the heat.

  3. Slowly stir in the milk until evenly mixed.

  4. Return to the heat and cook for two minutes.

Set up the double boiler

  1. Fill the lower part of the double boiler with hot water.

  2. Place the soup pan above it.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Peanut + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peanut + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Melts to form a fat base that the flour mixes into.
Milk
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens into a smooth soup.
Peanut butter
Adds nutty flavour and richness to the soup.

The step that matters

Slowly stirring in the milk. Flour starch clumps when a liquid is added too quickly. Adding the milk slowly and stirring until evenly mixed lets each starch granule disperse, giving a smooth rather than lumpy soup.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk. 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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