Skip to main content
Main

Chestnut Soup

A creamy chestnut soup made with stock, breadcrumbs, milk, sherry, and egg yolk, served hot with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chestnut Soup

Why it works: Chestnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 180 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Chestnut Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Boil the chestnuts in water for a few minutes.

  2. Peel the chestnuts carefully.

  3. Place the chestnuts in a saucepan.

  4. Cover with veal or other stock.

Make the soup

  1. Add breadcrumbs, pepper, salt, and nutmeg to taste.

  2. Cook for 2 hours.

  3. Stir in 1 pint of hot milk for each quart of soup.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Stir in sherry and the egg yolk.

  6. Serve hot 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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Chestnut + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together191 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Form the thick body of the soup as they soften and break down during cooking.
Breadcrumbs
Help thicken the soup and give it body.
Hot milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour.
Egg yolk
Enriches the soup and gives it a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Press the mixture through a sieve. Pressing softened chestnuts through a sieve breaks them into a fine, smooth purée. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup grainy and lumpy.

Swap the chestnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, milk, sherry, egg, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes