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Soup

Caper Soup

A soup made with water, milk, butter, capers, lemon, eggs, wheatmeal, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Caper Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the water, milk, and butter with pepper and salt to taste.

  2. Thicken the mixture with the wheatmeal rubbed smooth with a little milk.

  3. Chop the capers and add them to the soup; let it cook gently for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat, beat the eggs, and carefully add them to the soup to avoid curdling.

  2. Add the juice of the half lemon, reheat the soup without boiling, and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs added off the heat enrich and thicken the soup into a silky texture.
Fine wheatmeal
Starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the soup body.
Capers
Briny, sharp bits add a pungent acidity that flavours the soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich soup.
Butter
Adds fat, contributing richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs curdle when they overheat, so they must be added off the heat and the soup reheated without boiling. Lemon juice also adds acid, which can make the eggs more prone to curdling if the soup is too hot.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, egg, butter, 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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