Name: Cream Soup
Ingredients: 1 pint boiling water; 1-2 teacups cream; broken pieces of toasted bread; a little salt

Why it works: Cream and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,789 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Soup

Ingredients

1 pint boiling water
1-2 teacups cream
broken pieces of toasted bread
a little salt

Directions

Boil 1 pint of water.
Add 1-2 teacups of cream to the boiling water.
Stir in broken pieces of toasted bread.
Season with a little salt 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.

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.

Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream: Adds fat for richness and a smooth, full mouthfeel to the soup.
Toasted bread: Softens and absorbs liquid, thickening the soup and giving it body.

“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.