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Cockle Soup

A soup made with onions, garlic, butter, vinegars, mushroom ketchup, flour, celery, herbs, pepper, salt, and cockles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cockle Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a pan, fry the onion and garlic in butter until golden brown.

  2. Add tarragon vinegar, mushroom ketchup, chili vinegar, and water.

  3. In a bowl, mix flour with a little water to a smooth cream consistency, then add to the pan.

  4. Add celery, thyme, parsley, basil, and sage.

Simmer and finish

  1. Simmer for one hour.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Strain through a sieve.

  4. Stir in the picked cockles and their liquor.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, building a savoury base for the soup.
Butter
Carries the onion and garlic flavour and helps them brown in the pan.
Flour
Mixed with water to thicken the liquid into a smoother, fuller soup.
Picked cockles
Provide the main seafood flavour and briny character of the soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury umami flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with water. Flour must be whisked into a smooth cream with a little water before it goes into the pan. Added dry or in lumps, it will clump and resist blending, leaving a grainy texture in the soup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, butter, tarragon, vinegar, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, butter, tarragon, vinegar, mushroom, ketchup. 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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