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Almond Soup

A savory soup made with veal or fowl stock, almonds, 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. Boil veal or fowl with onion, celery, parsnip, mace, and water for four hours, then strain.

Make the almond base

  1. Blanch almonds, wash and pound them finely, then simmer them with milk for one hour.

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

Combine and serve

  1. Strain the stock, remove any fat, and return it to the pot with almond pulp, butter, and flour mixed.

  2. Boil while stirring continuously, then add cream, season, 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

Almonds
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup as finely pounded almond pulp.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and stirred into the liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture at the end.
Bread crumbs
Help thicken the almond mixture and give it a softer body.
Milk
Simmers with the almonds to soften them and add creaminess.

The step that matters

Boil while stirring continuously. Flour thickens only when heated and stirred, and stopping stirring lets it clump or scorch on the pot base, leaving lumps and a burnt taste.

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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