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Peanut Cream Soup

A warm soup made with milk, water, celery, barley or rice, peanut butter, flour, butter, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Peanut Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the milk and water together.

  2. Dissolve the peanut butter in the warm water and add it to the pot.

  3. Stir in the celery, barley or rice, and season with salt and pepper.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the flour and butter together, then add to the soup to thicken.

  2. Serve piping hot 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.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Celery + barleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Barley + peanuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Peanut butter
Adds a rich, nutty flavour and body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a creamy consistency when mixed with butter.
Butter
Carries the flour smoothly into the soup and adds richness.
Barley or rice
Adds bulk and a soft, starchy texture to the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture. Flour mixed with butter should be added to the hot soup and stirred well so it thickens evenly without lumps. Adding it cold or unmixed can leave clumps of raw flour that stay in the soup.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, milk, barley, butter, pepper, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, milk, barley, butter, pepper, 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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