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Marsala-Wine Soup

A sweet soup made with Marsala wine, water, cinnamon, sugar, egg yolks, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Marsala-Wine Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine Marsala wine and water in a saucepan with cinnamon.

  2. Sweeten with sugar and bring to a boil.

Toast the bread

  1. Toast bread slices, cut into small pieces, and roll in sugar.

  2. Place the bread in a quick oven until the sugar melts.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the soup off the heat.

  2. Pour the soup over the toasted bread in a soup tureen and serve hot.

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. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Cinnamon + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Marsala wine
Gives the soup its main wine flavour and aroma, with a mellow sweetness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness as they set gently in the warm liquid.
Bread
Soaks up the soup, giving the dish body and a soft, custardy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the soup and melts onto the bread, adding a glossy, lightly browned coating.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma that scents the wine as it heats.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks in off the heat. Hot liquid scrambles egg yolks if they are heated too quickly. Beating them in off the heat lets them thicken the soup smoothly and evenly.

“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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