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Paste Soup

A soup made from a paste of butter, flour, egg, and stock, flavored 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. In a bowl, rub together the butter and baked flour until perfectly mixed.

  2. Beat the yolk of egg and stir it into the flour mixture.

  3. Knead the mixture into a stiff paste and roll it out as thin as a shilling.

  4. Cut the paste into strips, each 1 inch long and ⅛ inch wide.

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

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the cold water in a pot.

  2. Add the paste to the boiling water and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Grate and add the Parmesan cheese and Marsala wine before serving.

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

Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the paste a tender texture and flavour.
Baked flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the paste together.
Yolk of egg
Binds the dough and adds richness to the paste.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the finished soup.
Marsala wine
Adds a sweet, aromatic depth of flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Rolling and resting the paste. Rolling the paste very thin and letting the strips rest lets the dough dry slightly and firm up, so the pasta holds its shape and cooks evenly in the water rather than turning gummy or breaking apart.

“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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