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Tapioca Soup, Potage Au Tapioca

A light soup made with tapioca pearls, broth, milk, and seasonings, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Tapioca Soup, Potage Au Tapioca

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Soak the tapioca in water for 30 minutes.

  2. In a pot, bring the broth to a boil.

Cook the soup

  1. Add the soaked tapioca and cook until transparent, about 15 minutes.

  2. Stir in the milk and season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with chopped parsley.

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. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Thickens the soup as it cooks and turns it translucent, giving a gel-like body.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that the tapioca cooks in and carries the soup's flavor.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's savory broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the soaked tapioca until transparent. Tapioca pearls thicken as their starch gelatinizes during simmering. Undercooked pearls stay opaque and chalky, while overcooking can make the soup gummy and overly thick.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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