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Brown Flour Soup

A thickened soup made with common stock, flour, cloves, allspice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Brown Flour Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the common stock in a pot.

  2. Brown the flour over medium heat in a separate pan.

Make the soup

  1. Add the browned flour to the stock until the soup thickens to your liking.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the cloves and allspice.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browning the flour adds a toasted, nutty flavour and thickens the stock when added.
Common stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup that the browned flour thickens.
Ground cloves
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the finished soup.
Ground allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour browned over medium heat needs constant attention, since scorching gives a bitter, burnt taste. Gentle, even browning develops nutty, toasted flavour before the flour is added to the stock.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, allspice, pepper. 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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