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Crust Soup

A soup made by simmering stale crusts with onion, butter, eggs, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crust Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crusts

  1. Break the crusts into small pieces.

  2. Pour boiling water over the crusts.

  3. Set the crusts in a pot of boiling water with the minced onion and seasoning for one hour.

Make the soup base

  1. Skim the cold soup.

  2. Heat the soup to a boil.

  3. Add the butter to the crusts and cover for an additional 10 minutes.

  4. Combine the crust mixture with the hot soup.

  5. Stir in the chopped parsley.

  6. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Finish with eggs

  1. Beat the eggs lightly.

  2. Pour a little of the soup over the eggs to warm them.

  3. Stir the eggs into the kettle.

  4. Remove from heat immediately to prevent the eggs from 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry crusts
Soak up liquid and give the soup body and a bread-like texture.
Yesterday's soup
Supplies the main liquid and most of the savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Onion
Contributes aroma and mild sweetness as it cooks in the broth.
Eggs
Set when heated, thickening and enriching the soup.

The step that matters

Remove from heat immediately after adding the eggs. Egg proteins coagulate when overheated, which turns them grainy or curdled. Warming the eggs with a little hot soup first, then leaving the pot off the heat, keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, pepper, parsley. 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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