Skip to main content
Main

Crusts for Cream Soups

A fried crust made from a chilled batter of water, butter, salt, flour, and eggs, rolled and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Crusts for Cream Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine water, butter, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Once boiling, add flour and stir vigorously until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.

  4. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well.

  5. Chill the mixture until very cold.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the mixture into long strings.

  2. Cut the strings into ½ inch pieces.

  3. Roll the pieces in flour to make them round.

  4. Fry the rounded pieces in hot lard until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Starch that gelatinises with the hot water and butter to form a stiff, cohesive dough.
Eggs
Add protein and moisture that bind the dough and help it puff and brown when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Lard
Hot frying fat that cooks the pieces quickly and gives them a golden, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture until very cold. A cold, firm dough holds its shape when rolled into strings and cut. If it stays warm and soft, the pieces will sag and stick, and they may fry unevenly.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes