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White Swiss Soup

A clear soup made with stock, eggs, flour, and milk, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

White Swiss Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs, flour, and milk together.

  2. Slowly pour this mixture through a sieve into the boiling soup stock.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste, and chopped parsley if desired.

  4. Pour the soup through the sieve again into the soup tureen.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Thicken the soup as they set, giving it a light, silky body.
Flour
Helps thicken the egg mixture so it blends smoothly into the stock.
Milk
Adds richness and softness, and dilutes the egg and flour for smooth blending.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the egg mixture into the boiling stock. Pouring slowly through a sieve and into hot liquid helps the eggs disperse evenly. Adding it too fast can cause the egg to curdle into lumps instead of thickening the soup smoothly.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, 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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