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Thickening for Stock

A method for thickening clear or cream soups using arrowroot, cornstarch, tapioca, or egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Thickening for Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. For clear soup, mix 1 tablespoon of arrow-root with a little stock until smooth.

  2. Add the mixture to 1 quart of boiling stock and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. For cornstarch, use the same amount but expect slight cloudiness.

  4. For tapioca, sprinkle into boiling soup and boil for 10 minutes.

  5. For cream soups, beat 2 egg yolks with a little cold milk, then add to the soup and boil briefly.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Arrow-root
Swells in hot liquid to thicken the stock while keeping it clear.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich cream soups as they set gently with heat.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to cream soups. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet boiling liquid directly. Beating them with cold milk first and adding them to the soup, then boiling only briefly, helps them thicken smoothly.

“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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