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Friars' Soup

A vegetable and rice soup with eggs and butter, simmered and seasoned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Friars' Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the chopped vegetables in 3 quarts of water until soft enough to be pulped through a colander.

  2. Return the pulped vegetables and cooking water to the pot.

  3. In a separate pot, boil the rice in a little water until it swells and absorbs all the water.

Finish the soup

  1. Stir the rice into the vegetable mixture, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the butter and simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Dip out 1 cup of the soup and beat it into the eggs.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the soup, and remove from heat before it begins to boil to prevent curdling.

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. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down into a pulp that thickens and gives the soup body and flavour.
Turnips
Pulped into the soup, adding body and a mild, earthy sweetness.
Raw rice
Swells and absorbs liquid, thickening the soup and giving it a fuller texture.
Eggs
Beaten into the soup, they set slightly and enrich its texture and colour.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs curdle if the soup boils after they go in. Tempering them with hot soup first and removing the pot from heat keeps the mixture smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, cabbage, turnip, butter, rice, egg, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, cabbage, turnip, butter, rice, egg, 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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