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Soup

Cream of Beet Soup

A soup made from stewed beets, cream, and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream of Beet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Stew chopped beets until tender.

  2. Add beets to hot cream.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Thicken with flour, then strain the mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour into bouillon cups and top with a spoonful of whipped cream.

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 + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Beets
Provide the main body, earthy flavour and colour of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup becomes body-rich rather than watery.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour, then strain the mixture. Flour must be fully incorporated into the hot liquid, or it forms lumps that strain cannot remove cleanly. Stirring while it heats lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the soup smoothly.

“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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