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Pumpkin Soup

A creamy pumpkin soup made with butter, stock, milk, eggs, and bread, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Pumpkin Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Peel and cut the pumpkin into thick slices, removing the seeds.

  2. Place the pumpkin in a stewpan and cover with water.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and boil gently for 5 minutes.

  4. Pour away the water and pass the pumpkin through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and stir in the pumpkin pulp for a few minutes.

  2. Add the boiling hot stock to the pumpkin mixture.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in milk, add the sliced onion and water, and bring to a boil. Add this to the soup and simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally and removing any scum.

  4. Add the bay leaves for flavor.

  5. After 20 minutes, strain the soup through a colander.

  6. Stir in a pinch of sugar, pepper, and salt, and let it boil gently for a few more minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. In a soup tureen, beat the egg yolks with a little milk.

  2. Pour the hot soup into the tureen while stirring briskly.

  3. Serve with slices of fried bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pumpkin + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Forms the body and thick, smooth texture of the soup once passed through a sieve.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when melted and stirred with the pumpkin pulp.
Stale bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and help thicken the soup for a fuller body.
Eggs
Egg yolks beaten into the tureen enrich and thicken the soup as it is poured in.
Stock
Provides the main savory liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot soup into the beaten egg yolks while stirring briskly. Stirring briskly while adding hot soup gradually warms the yolks so they blend smoothly and thicken the soup without scrambling into lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pumpkin, butter, bread, milk, sugar, pepper, 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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