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Italian Soup

A simple Italian soup made with onion, butter, rice, water, milk, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and topped with cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Italian Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Slice the onion into rings and fry in the butter.

  2. Add the rice and water, then boil until the rice is soft and has absorbed all the water.

  3. Thin the mixture to a proper consistency with milk.

  4. Add the grated nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve with grated cheese on top.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens as it boils and absorbs the water, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Butter
Fat that fries the onion, carrying flavour and adding richness.
Onion
Frying softens and sweetens it, building the savoury base of the soup.
Milk
Thins the cooked rice to a smooth, creamy consistency.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, savoury flavour on top as the soup is served.

The step that matters

Boiling the rice until it absorbs all the water. Rice must cook long enough to soften fully and absorb the liquid, or the soup stays thin and grainy. Stopping early leaves firm grains, while overcooking can make the texture gluey.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rice, milk, nutmeg, pepper, cheese):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, milk, nutmeg, pepper, cheese. 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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