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Cream Soup for Invalids

A creamy soup made with cream, milk, eggs, and toasted bread squares, seasoned with salt and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cream Soup for Invalids

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the cream and milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Season with salt and a pinch of cinnamon.

  3. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  4. Remove the pot from heat and let it cool slightly to avoid cooking the eggs.

  5. Stir in the beaten eggs.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread and cut it into ½ inch squares.

  2. Place a few pieces of bread in each plate and pour the soup over.

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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Milk
Thins the cream and adds mild sweetness and liquid to the soup.
Eggs
Thicken the soup gently as they set, giving it a custard-like body.
Bread
Soaks up the warm soup and adds a soft, substantial texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs off the heat. Eggs thicken by setting when heated, so if the soup is too hot they can curdle or turn grainy. Letting the pot cool slightly before stirring them in lets them thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, egg, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, egg, bread. 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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