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Plain Soup

A simple soup made by emulsifying peanut butter in boiling water, optionally flavored with vegetables or grains.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peanut and celery work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 148 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Plain Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Emulsify peanut butter in boiling water.

  2. Cook in a double boiler for one hour.

  3. Add salt to taste just before serving.

  4. Optionally, add celery, onions, summer savory, thyme, steamed rice, cooked macaroni, vermicelli, or finely chopped cooked vegetables for variation.

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. Peanut + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Peanut + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,754 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + celerytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Peanut butter
Provides the main body and rich, nutty flavour of the soup.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peanut, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peanut, butter. 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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