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Apple Soup

A sweet apple soup flavored with lemon, nutmeg, and wine or cider, served over sliced apples cooked in syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Apple Soup

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apple Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Peel and stew the apples in ½ pint of water.

  2. Add sugar to taste, then press the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Flavor with lemon juice and nutmeg, then stir in 1 tablespoon of cornstarch. Cook for about 10 minutes.

  4. When cool, add 1 pint of white wine or cider.

Serve

  1. Serve over 4 sliced apples that have been cooked in syrup.

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.

  1. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main body and flavor of the soup once stewed and pressed through a sieve.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
White wine or cider
Adds acidity and fruity flavor to the cooled soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the cornstarch before cooking. Cornstarch must be heated to thicken. Stirring it in and cooking briefly lets the starch swell and set the soup's body, while stirring evenly prevents lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, lemon, white wine, syrup):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, lemon, white wine, syrup. 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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