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Water Soup for Invalids

A simple soup made with stale bread, butter, salt, water, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Water Soup for Invalids

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the sliced stale bread in a bowl.

  2. Add the butter and salt.

Soak and serve

  1. Pour boiling water over the bread and cover closely for 1 minute.

  2. Stir in the sweet cream 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + walnuttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together714 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Walnut + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaks up the hot water and gives the soup its body.
Butter
Adds fat, which carries flavor and makes the soup feel rich.
Boiling water
Softens the bread as it soaks and heats the mixture.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Covering the bread after pouring the boiling water. Covering traps steam so the bread softens evenly through, rather than drying at the surface. Uncovered, the hot water escapes and the bread can stay firm in places.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Lima beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream. 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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