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Summer Squash, or Cymbling Soup

A veal and squash soup with fried bread, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Summer Squash, or Cymbling Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil bones, veal, and onion in 4 quarts of water until reduced to 2 quarts.

  2. Strain the broth.

  3. Cool it.

  4. Remove the fat.

Add the squash

  1. Cook the squash in 1 pint of the stock until soft enough to pass through a colander.

  2. Add the squash pulp and its liquid to the remaining 3 pints of broth.

  3. Stir in the sugar, seasoning, and floured butter.

  4. Cook slowly for 5 minutes without boiling.

Thicken and serve

  1. Heat the milk.

  2. Pour it over the eggs.

  3. Stir over low heat until it begins to thicken.

  4. Place diced fried bread in a tureen.

  5. Pour the milk and egg mixture over it.

  6. Add the soup.

  7. Stir well.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Thicken the soup as they gently set when stirred over low heat.
White squash
Forms the body of the soup when cooked and passed through a colander.
Butter
Rubbed into flour, it helps thicken the soup and adds richness.
Milk
Adds creaminess and moisture, softening the soup's flavor.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory broth.
Veal bones
Release gelatin and flavor during boiling, giving the broth body and depth.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until it begins to thicken. Egg proteins set when heated, but too much heat makes them scramble and curdle. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep the mixture smooth as it thickens.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, milk, sugar, 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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