Skip to main content
Main

Chestnut Soup

A soup made from boiled chestnuts, water, lemon rind, sugar, salt, stock, parsley, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chestnut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Boil the chestnuts in salted water for 20 minutes, then peel and chop finely.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the chopped chestnuts, water, lemon rind, sugar, and salt.

  3. Cook gently for 30 minutes, then rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the soup to the saucepan, add the white stock, parsley, and pepper.

  2. Simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring constantly, then pass it through a sieve again.

  3. Serve with slices of dry toast.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Chestnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chestnut + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together381 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
Form the bulk of the soup, and their starch thickens it as they break down.
White stock
Provides the liquid base and savory flavor that carries the soup.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savory stock and chestnut flavor.

The step that matters

Simmering with constant stirring. Once the soup is returned to the pan with stock, it can scorch or stick on the bottom if left unattended. Constant stirring over gentle heat keeps it smooth and prevents burnt flavors.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, parsley, pepper):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, parsley, pepper. 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.

More chestnut soup recipes

Spanish 5 See all 73 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes