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Beet Soup

A soup made from boiled beets, nut milk, peanut cream, water, salt, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and peanut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,048 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Beet Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beets

  1. Boil the small beets until tender.

  2. Let the beets cool, then grate them.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the grated beets, nut milk, and peanut cream.

  2. Add water and heat the mixture to boiling.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt.

  4. Thicken with a little white flour.

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 + peanuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peanuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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, colour and earthy sweetness of the soup.
Nut milk
Adds liquid and creamy body to the soup base.
Peanut cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a creamier mouthfeel.
White flour
Thickens the soup as its starch gelatinises when heated with liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken with a little white flour. Flour must be whisked into liquid or added with some hot liquid first so it disperses evenly; otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens properly only once the mixture reaches a simmer.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, flour. 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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