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Almond Soup

A veal or fowl stock-based soup with almond paste, bread crumbs, cream, and butter.

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. Boil the veal or fowl, onion, celery, parsnip, mace, and water for 4 hours.

  2. Strain the stock.

Make the almond base

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

  2. Simmer the almond paste with the milk for 1 hour in a clean saucepan.

  3. Add the bread crumbs to the almond mixture and rub it through a fine sieve.

Finish the soup

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

  2. Add the almond pulp, butter, and flour mixture to the pot and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

  3. 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

Veal or fowl
Gives the stock its meaty body and savoury flavour as it simmers for hours.
Sweet almonds
Provide the nutty flavour and thick, creamy body of the soup once pounded and sieved.
Bread or biscuit crumbs
Help thicken the almond mixture and give it a smoother, fuller texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour and mouthfeel of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and stirred into the hot stock.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Bring the soup to a boil while stirring constantly. Flour thickens only when heated and stirred, and the almond base can scorch or turn lumpy on the bottom of the pot if left unattended.

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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