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Blackberry Soup

A sweet and slightly spiced blackberry soup simmered with butter, flour, water, cloves, and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Blackberry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in an enamelled saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until slightly browned.

  3. Slowly pour in the water and add the blackberries and cloves.

  4. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  5. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve to remove the seeds.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the port and a few fine blackberries.

  2. Heat the soup until the blackberries are cooked, about a few minutes.

  3. Serve in a soup tureen.

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. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred into the melted butter and browned.
Blackberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the soup.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a fine sieve. Blackberry seeds are hard and unpleasant if left in the soup, and pressing the cooked fruit through a fine sieve removes them while keeping the smooth body the soup needs.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, clove):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, clove. 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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