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Bread Soup

A soup made from stale wholemeal bread, onions, turnips, celery, butter, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bread Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread crusts in water for 2 hours.

  2. Dice the onions, turnips, and celery.

Cook and strain

  1. In a large pot, combine the soaked bread, diced vegetables, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Rub the soup through a sieve back into the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the milk and parsley, and nutmeg if desired.

  2. Bring the soup to a boil.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Wholemeal bread crusts
Soaked and puréed to thicken the soup and give it body.
Onions
Soften during simmering to add sweetness and savoury depth.
Turnips
Break down during simmering to add body and a mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the soup's flavour and mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour at the end.

The step that matters

Rubbing the soup through a sieve. Pushing the cooked bread and vegetables through a sieve breaks them into fine particles that thicken the liquid smoothly. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup lumpy and thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, turnip, celery, butter, parsley, milk, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, turnip, celery, butter, parsley, 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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