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Paste Soup

A soup made from a butter, flour, and egg yolk paste, simmered in stock with Parmesan and Marsala.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parmesan cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,163 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Paste Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Rub together the butter, baked flour, and egg yolk until perfectly mixed.

  2. Stir in the cold water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Roll out the paste as thin as a shilling and cut into strips 1 inch long and ⅛ inch wide.

  4. Set the strips in a cool, airy place for 5 to 6 hours.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the stock, then add the paste.

  2. Grate and add the Parmesan cheese and Marsala wine.

  3. Boil fast for 20 minutes and serve with additional grated Parmesan on top.

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 + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Parmesan cheese + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,004 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Baked flour
Forms the stiff paste structure that holds the strips together in the stock.
Egg yolk
Binds the butter and flour into a smooth, cohesive dough.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing tenderness and flavor to the paste.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and umami to the broth.
Marsala wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Setting the paste strips to rest. Resting the cut paste for several hours lets it dry and firm, so the strips hold their shape and do not dissolve into the hot stock during the fast boil.

“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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