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Soup

Almond Cream Soup

A creamy soup made from chicken stock, blanched almonds, bread crumbs, vegetables, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Almond Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the fowl and water in a soup kettle, cover, and simmer gently for 3 hours.

  2. Strain the stock and chill it. Remove fat and bones, then chop the white meat finely.

  3. Blanch the almonds and chop them finely.

Make the soup

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the stock, bread crumbs, celery, carrot, onion, bay leaf, cloves, cinnamon, parsley, salt, and white pepper; simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve. Return to heat with the chicken and almonds, and add the cream.

  3. Season to taste. When nearly boiling, add the butter mixed with flour. Stir gently until dissolved, then simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Rub through a fine sieve, reheat, and serve.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Give the soup its creamy body and nutty flavour when finely chopped and sieved.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the stock and give the soup a smooth, velvety body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style mix that thickens the soup as it dissolves and simmers.
Fowl
Builds the savoury flavour of the stock and supplies the meat for the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour must be fully dissolved and the soup kept just below a boil while stirring gently. Adding it to a boiling soup or stirring too hard can leave lumps or make the thickening uneven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, bread, celery, carrot, clove, cinnamon, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, bread, celery, carrot, clove, cinnamon, parsley. 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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