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Palestine Soup

A creamy soup made from Jerusalem artichokes simmered with stock, herbs, and finished with boiled cream and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Palestine Soup

Why it works: Jerusalem artichoke and leek share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Palestine Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the Jerusalem artichokes, covering them with cold water as you peel.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the artichokes, leek, parsley, celery, salt, and pepper.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add 2 quarts of stock or hot water and simmer for 1.5 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture, removing everything except the artichokes.

  3. Press the artichokes through a sieve and return to the liquid in the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the mixture until hot, then beat in 1 pint of boiled cream.

  2. Add a little nutmeg, taste for seasoning, and serve with croutons.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Jerusalem artichoke + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Jerusalem artichoke + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Jerusalem artichokes
Provide the starch and body that thicken the soup when pressed through a sieve.
Boiled cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Stock or hot water
Forms the cooking liquid that extracts flavour from the artichokes and sets the soup's volume.

The step that matters

Pressing the artichokes through a sieve. Pressing the cooked artichokes breaks them into fine particles that thicken the liquid and give a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup thin and gritty.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (jerusalem artichoke, leek, parsley, celery, pepper, cream):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against jerusalem artichoke, leek, parsley, celery, pepper, cream. 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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