Skip to main content
Main

Almond Soup

A soup made from sweet and bitter almonds, egg yolks, and stock, thickened with butter and flour, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Almond Soup

Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make stock from veal or old fowl.

  2. In a mortar, combine sweet almonds, a few bitter almonds, egg yolks, and white pepper; pound until very fine.

Make the soup

  1. Add the almond mixture to the stock and let it simmer gently, adding cold broth as it reduces.

  2. Strain the soup.

  3. Thicken with butter kneaded in flour.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the heavy cream.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the soup.
Egg yolks
Help enrich the soup and add richness to its texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with flour helps thicken the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when kneaded with butter.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and smooth, rich texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour thickener. Kneaded butter and flour must be whisked into simmering soup so the starch swells evenly. Added in lumps or to a boiling soup, it can clump and leave the texture uneven.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, egg, veal, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, veal, butter, flour, 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.

More almond soup recipes

Chicken 5White 3 See all 79 →

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesAlmond SaladAlmond Salad6 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes