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Tapioca Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with tapioca, stock, milk, onion, celery, butter, mace, salt, pepper, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tapioca Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Wash the tapioca.

  2. Soak it overnight in cold water.

Make the soup

  1. Cook the soaked tapioca in the stock gently for about 1 hour.

  2. In a separate pot, cook the onion and celery in the milk with a little mace for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the cooked onion and celery mixture into the stock and tapioca.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Serve in cups with a little whipped cream added.

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

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

Tapioca
Swells during long simmering and thickens the stock into a creamy body.
White stock
Forms the liquid base in which the tapioca cooks and softens.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and mellow body to the soup.
Onion and celery
Infuse the milk with savory aroma that flavors the soup.

The step that matters

Gentle simmering of the tapioca in the stock. Tapioca starch needs sustained, gentle heat to fully swell and turn translucent and tender. Boiling hard or cooking too briefly can leave it grainy or unevenly thickened, and it may scorch on the bottom of the pot if not stirred.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, onion, celery, butter, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, onion, celery, butter, 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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