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Chestnut Soup

A creamy chestnut soup made with stock, milk, egg yolks, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and cracker dust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chestnut Soup

Why it works: Chestnut and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 826 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Chestnut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Remove the outer peel from the chestnuts.

  2. Pour scalding water over the chestnuts to remove the inner coating.

  3. Place the chestnuts in a saucepan with 1 quart of soup stock and boil for 45 minutes.

  4. Drain the chestnuts.

  5. Rub the chestnuts through a colander.

  6. Rub the chestnuts through a sieve, adding 1 tablespoon of cracker dust.

Make the soup

  1. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  2. Gradually add the stock in which the chestnuts were boiled and 1 pint more of stock.

  3. Boil the soup once, then remove from heat.

  4. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs and add them to 1 quart of warm milk, whisking the mixture into the soup.

  5. Taste for seasoning.

  6. Pour the soup into a hot tureen and serve with croutons.

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. Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Chestnut + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Chestnut + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Cooked and puréed chestnuts give the soup its body and its main flavour.
Egg yolks
Yolks thicken the soup and make it smoother and richer when heated gently.
Milk
Milk adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup.
Cracker dust
Fine cracker crumbs help thicken the purée and give it more body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and milk mixture. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the soup is boiling when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Remove the soup from the heat before whisking them in.

Swap the chestnut

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, milk. 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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