Skip to main content
Soup

Pearl Sago Soup

A savory soup made with pearl sago, tomato soup, onion, lemon peel, garlic, bay leaves, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pearl Sago Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the pearl sago in 2 quarts of water until clear and thick.

  2. Add the tomato soup packets, onion, lemon peel, garlic, and bay leaves.

  3. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the onion, garlic, lemon peel, and bay leaves before serving.

  2. Stir in tarragon vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and mushroom ketchup.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Lemon + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl sago
Starch that swells and thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Tomato soup packets
Supply the main flavour, colour and seasoning base of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the soup.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds salty, tangy savoury depth that rounds out the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the pearl sago until clear and thick. Pearl sago must be boiled long enough for its starch granules to swell and burst, which makes the soup thicken and turn translucent. Undercooked sago leaves hard, opaque pearls and a thin, chalky texture.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, lemon, garlic, butter, tarragon, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato BisqueTomato Bisque11 recipesIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipes