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Chicory Soup

A soup made from chicory, flour, butter, stock, milk, and egg yolks, seasoned with pepper, salt, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicory Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicory

  1. Trim the chicory and boil until half cooked, then drain and mince finely.

  2. Mix the minced chicory with flour, butter, and a sprinkling of pepper, salt, and mace.

Make the soup

  1. Place the mixture in a saucepan with white stock and boiling milk.

  2. Cook carefully for 1 hour.

  3. Beat the egg yolks in ½ cup of milk and add to the soup after it has gone off the boil.

  4. Strain the soup through a fine sieve and serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Chicory + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicory + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Chicory
Provides the main bitter vegetable flavour and body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by absorbing liquid as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, giving it a silkier texture.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the soup's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot. Adding them after it has come off the boil lets them thicken gently and stay smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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