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Brussels Sprout Soup

A creamy soup made with Brussels sprouts, stock, butter, flour, and cream, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Brussels Sprout Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour, mixing well.

  2. Pour in the stock and bring to a boil.

Prepare the sprouts

  1. Cook a few Brussels sprouts until tender, preserving their color.

  2. Rub the cooked sprouts through a fine sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the sieved sprouts to the boiling stock.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Stir in the cream 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavor into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body-rich base.
Stock
Forms the liquid that the sprouts and cream are combined into.
Brussels sprouts
Provide the main vegetable flavor and, once sieved, the soup's body.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel at the end.

The step that matters

Rubbing the sprouts through a fine sieve. Sprouts must be fully tender before sieving, or the purée stays fibrous and grainy. Cooking them only until tender also helps keep their green color, since prolonged heat dulls chlorophyll.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, cream. 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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