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Cherry Soup

A chilled cherry soup made with cherries, water, cinnamon, sugar, and cornstarch, served with a garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cherry Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stones from the cherries.

  2. Bring the water and cinnamon to a boil in a pot.

  3. Add the cherries and let them simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.

  4. Add sugar to taste and thicken with a little cornstarch.

Cool and serve

  1. Cool the soup and serve with swieback.

  2. If serving on hot days, prepare in the morning and allow to cool.

  3. Optionally, place beaten egg whites with sugar on top before serving.

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. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, glossy soup as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the soup and balances the tartness of the cherries.
Beaten egg whites
Add a light, airy foam on top when used as an optional garnish.

The step that matters

Thicken with cornstarch. Cornstarch thickens only when heated enough for its starch granules to swell and gelatinize. Stir it into simmering liquid, not cold, to avoid lumps and a thin, uneven texture.

“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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