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Pumpkin Soup

A soup made from boiled pumpkin, sweetened with sugar, seasoned with pepper and salt, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Pumpkin Soup

Why it works: Pumpkin and bread work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pumpkin

  1. Peel and remove seeds from the pumpkin, then cut it into pieces.

  2. Boil the pumpkin pieces in water until soft.

Make the soup

  1. Pass the contents through a coarse sieve.

  2. Boil again, adding more water if too thick.

  3. Season with sugar, pepper, and salt as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen with fried bread on the side.

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. Pumpkin + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Pumpkin + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Pumpkin + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,650 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin
Forms the body of the soup, giving it bulk and a smooth texture once cooked and sieved.
Water
Cooks the pumpkin until soft and thins the soup to the desired consistency.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the earthy flavour of the pumpkin.

The step that matters

Passing the cooked pumpkin through a coarse sieve. The pumpkin must be soft enough to press through the sieve, so it should be fully cooked first. Pressing it smooth gives the soup its even texture, and any skin or fibre left behind would be noticeable.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, bread. 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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