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Cheese Soup

A creamy ham and cheese soup made with ham, onions, butter, bread crumbs, chicken broth, spices, egg yolks, and Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cheese Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Fry the minced ham and sliced onions in butter until softened.

  2. Mix in the bread crumbs and combine with the chicken broth.

  3. Season with mace, pepper, and salt.

  4. Cook for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the egg yolks and Parmesan cheese.

  2. Press through a sieve and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Thicken the broth and give the soup a body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and add richness and smoothness when stirred in.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and body to the soup.
Butter
Carries the onions and ham, adding fat and flavor for frying.
Sliced onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the soup's base flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot when they are added. Stir them in gently and keep the soup below a boil so it stays smooth and creamy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, onion, butter, bread, chicken, pepper, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, butter, bread, chicken, 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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