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Almond Soup

A creamy soup made from veal or fowl stock, almond paste, milk, cream, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Almond Soup

Why it works: Celery and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 561 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Almond Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make the stock by boiling the veal or fowl, onion, celery, parsnip, mace, and water for four hours, then strain it.

  2. Strain the stock, remove any fat, and return it to the pot.

Make the almond base

  1. Blanch the almonds, wash, and pound them as finely as possible.

  2. In a clean saucepan, simmer the almond paste with the milk for one hour.

  3. Add the bread crumbs at the end and rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix in the almond pulp, butter, and flour, and allow it to boil while stirring continuously.

  2. Finally, add the cream, season to taste, 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Celery + parsniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Almond + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Celery + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main nutty flavour and body of the soup once pounded and strained.
Bread or biscuit crumbs
Thicken the soup and give it a smoother, fuller texture when rubbed through a sieve.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it boils with the butter and almond mixture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture at the end.

The step that matters

Boil the flour mixture while stirring continuously. Flour thickens liquid only when it is stirred and brought to a boil; without constant stirring it can clump and leave lumps in the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, celery, cream, milk, almond, parsnip):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, celery, cream, milk, almond, parsnip. 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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