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Cherry Soup

A chilled soup made with cherries, wine, water, sago, lemon, cinnamon, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cherry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine cherries, wine, water, sago, lemon slices, and cinnamon.

  2. Cook for about 30 minutes.

  3. If the soup is too thick, add more wine and water.

  4. Sweeten to taste, using up to 1 cup of sugar.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Red wine + cinnamontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Red wine + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together779 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour, sweetness, and body as they soften and release juice.
Pearl sago
Thickens the soup as its starch swells and gelatinises during cooking.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour, and thins the soup when more is added.
Sugar
Sweetens the soup, balancing the wine's acidity and the cherries' tartness.

The step that matters

Cook the sago until clear. Sago must cook long enough for its starch to fully gelatinise, or it stays opaque and chalky and can thicken unevenly. Stirring helps prevent it from sticking and clumping at the bottom of the pot.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red wine, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, cinnamon, sugar. 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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