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Cherry Soup

A chilled cherry soup flavored with cinnamon, sweetened with sugar, thickened with cornstarch, served with zwieback and optional sweetened egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cherry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 2 quarts of water and 1 stick of cinnamon to a boil.

  2. Add the pitted cherries and let them simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Add sugar to taste and thicken the soup with a little cornstarch.

  4. Cool the soup and serve with zwieback.

  5. For a refreshing touch, top with beaten egg whites mixed with a little sugar.

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. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and body of the soup as they cook down.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a soft, spoonable soup as it heats.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the cherries.

“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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